Last night, WWE Raw Women’s Champion Ronda Rousey celebrated her successful Royal Rumble title defense from the night before by issuing an open challenge for anybody in the back hoping to make a claim for her title. Rousey’s next opponent would emerge in the form of former Raw Women’s Champion Bayley.
Last night provided The Huggable One with her first televised title match in almost a year. Bayley last challenged for the WWE Raw Women’s Championship at Elimination Chamber 2018. In this last year, Bayley has been completely absent from the women’s main event picture. To put it bluntly, The Huggable One has not had much of a presence in storylines at all, considering she’s spent most of her time on Raw this year in tag team matches alongside frenemy Sasha Banks.
While there’s certainly nothing wrong with the spot she has occupied, the positioning and inconsistent booking of her rivalry turned friendship with Sasha Banks has kept the other half of The Boss ‘n’ Hug Connection from appearing like a main event contender. In one night’s time, she went from not being featured in a big storyline to being inserted in a Raw Women’s Title match.
It’s not that different from when Apollo Crews randomly received an Intercontinental Championship match last month after being completely absent from storylines and WWE television altogether. Although to be fair, Bayley’s quick transition to the main title picture was far better executed and believable.
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More than that, it doesn’t help that we’re so close to WrestleMania. Being this close, no one really expects Rousey to lose the title before ‘Mania. While Bayley feels like enough of a credible challenger that we can imagine her winning a WWE Women’s Championship on any day of the week, few expected Bayley – or anybody – would defeat Rousey for the Raw Women’s Championship two months before WrestleMania with Becky Lynch waiting in the wings.
Having this mindset easily could have easily put a damper on last night’s title match out of Bayley’s favor. However, in her unexpected return to the title picture, she made her time count and, in many ways, once again made a believer out of us all. She pulled out all the stops to prove she’s still in main event form without having missed a single beat.
There's no doubt that @itsBayleyWWE came to FIGHT! #Raw pic.twitter.com/IG09Npq4TL
— WWE (@WWE) January 29, 2019
In her title match against the MMA specialist, the challenger exhibited a totally different wrestling style than we’re used to seeing from Bayley. Rather than playing to the crowd as the energetic fan-favorite she’s been known to be, Bayley wrestled at a much slower, methodical pace with a technical style. Bayley spent much of the match favoring holds and working Rousey’s leg. She even pulled out a few new tricks, including reversing a Big Boot into an Achilles Lock. Bayley also paid homage to The Boss by strapping a Bank Statement onto Rousey.
While Bayley’s performance didn’t end with her capturing the Raw Women’s Championship, that doesn’t change the fact that she delivered one of the better singles performances she’s had in a long time. With one match, Bayley reminded us all of the beloved rising star from NXT who was ready to headline for the main roster.
There was once a time when Bayley was known for regularly pulling off spectacular performances in high stakes, big stage matchups. Bayley gave us a couple groundbreaking TakeOver outings against Sasha Banks. As NXT Women’s Champion, she also had memorable title defenses against Nia Jax, Alexa Bliss, and Asuka. By the time she made it to the main roster, Bayley wasted no time in delivering a string of classics with Charlotte Flair both on television and pay-per-view.
We all know that Bayley has the stuff for the big leagues, but it’s something that’s easy to forget after she’s spent so much time away from the main event title picture. Her match with Ronda Rousey was a happy reminder that Bayley is one of the best performers that WWE has to offer among their whole roster.
Above everything else, Bayley not just impressed in a match against the former UFC Champion, but the crowd was unanimously on her side. The crowd was admittedly already against Rousey, especially after a poorly received promo before Rousey’s open challenge. Yet even if this particular crowd did not dislike The Baddest Woman on the Planet so much, they’d have surely still been supporting Bayley. After all, the fans always have.
What this overwhelmingly positive crowd reaction means is that there is still a demand from fans who want to see Bayley in the main event picture. It is almost reminiscent of reports stating that Vince McMahon was shocked at reactions for Asuka on the November 13 episode of SmackDown after not using The Empress in title worthy storylines for quite some time. One month later, Asuka was the SmackDown Women’s Champion.
Of course, we don’t expect Vince to put the Raw Women’s Championship on Bayley any time soon – although a WWE Women’s Tag Team Title reign could be in her near future – but we hope that last night’s performance opened the company’s eyes to the fact that she deserves a spot in this main event title picture. The people want to see her wrestle at that level, and frankly, that’s where Bayley deserves to be.