One of the newest members of the WWE Raw roster in a post-Shake-Up WWE world is 2-time SmackDown Women’s Champ, Naomi. Let’s speculate five future feuds for her.
The Superstar Shake-Up has come and gone by now and one of the biggest talking point coming out of it is that the WWE women’s division has been drastically altered on both shows. In their rebranding, the women’s divisions for both SmackDown and WWE Raw is looking pretty stellar; a lot to be excited about for the future of both divisions. One of those changes that get us really excited is the prospect of Naomi now being on the red brand.
Naomi had quite a bit of success on the blue brand. Among those successes saw her win the SmackDown Women’s Championship on two different occasions; one of those occasions being at the Grandaddy of Them All that is WrestleMania. Best of all, she won that last title in her hometown of Orlando, Florida. For a moment at least, it looked like Slayomi was on top of the world.
Unfortunately, just four months later, Naomi lost the title at SummerSlam and was eventually quietly phased out of the main event women’s title picture. While she continued to rack up some big wins overtime (including winning the inaugural Women’s Battle Royal at the following year’s WrestleMania), her glow never had the same luster as it used to two years ago.
Thankfully, the beauty of the Superstar Shake-Up is that it signals a fresh start for so many Superstars who need it. A move to the red brand can only mean great things for Naomi. It means not only new opportunities, but also new match-ups and new feuds.
5. Becky Lynch
Call her what you will – Becky 2 Belts, the Champ Champ, Becky Balboa, etc – but one thing is for sure, she is unapologetically The Man. Literally The Man, in that as a double champion, she is The Man to beat on both Raw and SmackDown. As the saying goes, to be The Man – WOOOOOOOOOOOO – you gotta beat The Man. Like the rest of the women’s locker room, we expect that Naomi wants to be The Man.
Naomi has not been The Man since she lost her last World Women’s Championship at SummerSlam 2017. Two years after her reign ended, Naomi is overdue for some gold around her waist. Right now, without a tag team partner to challenge for the WWE Women’s Tag Team Titles, her best shot at getting some gold would be to beat Becky Lynch.
Obviously, that is no easy task. After all, Lynch had to pin The Baddest Woman on the Planet to win both of those titles. However, whether Naomi wins, lose, or draws out of the feud, a feud/match combo between her and Becky sounds too good to pass up. Especially considering that apart from a 2015 feud between her and Tamina versus Becky and Sasha Banks, Naomi and The Man never really squared off against each other. That needs to change.
4. Alexa Bliss
Some of the best highlights from Naomi’s run on SmackDown came from her feud with Alexa Bliss. Both women were able to pull out the best character work out of each other in between delivering some great matches against each other. Character wise, Bliss and Naomi had phenomenal chemistry. The confident and defiant babyface worth rooting for versus the overly arrogant weasel of a heel made for a legitimate great dynamic.
Naomi perfectly encapsalated someone who everyone loved rooting for while Bliss was – and to this day, remains – the Superstar we all love to hate. It would be fantastic to see these two recreate that dynamic for the red brand. It would be intriguing to see these two add layers to their already compelling feud so many years ago.
If they were to recreate that feud now, it would make for perfect timing. Bliss has finally returned to in-ring competition. After her real life injury, she focused more on doing promo and character driven work, including running her own talk show and hosting WrestleMania. Her win over Bayley the night after Mania 35 seems to signal that she is returning full time to in-ring competition. A great return to form would be to rekindle an old rivalry against Naomi.
3. Tamina
Ever since last fall, Tamina spent her time in a tag team alliance with Nia Jax. They had a pretty strong run together considering their partnership took them to a WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship match at WrestleMania 35. Now, post-Mania, Jax is on the shelf hoping to rest, repair and rehab an ACL injury in both knees. Unless we count a loss on the WWE Network exclusive Main Event, we have not seen Tamina on television since Mania.
This seems to suggest that WWE simply don’t have any plans or ideas to build a solo run for Tamina. The perfect means to do so just arrived on WWE Raw: put her in a feud with Naomi.
Let’s take a trip down memory lane where back in 2015, Naomi aligned herself with Tamina and then-NXT Women’s Champion Sasha Banks to form Team B.A.D. As Raw’s resident bad girl group, the trio did pretty well for themselves until Tamina and Naomi kicked Sasha out of the group right before WrestleMania 32. The duo stuck together for a bit until Naomi moved to SmackDown and turned face.
Apart from some short nothing matches on the blue brand, we never got a true blow off feud between the remaining members of Team B.A.D. There is enough history between them to produce a full blown storyline with the two cousins. Say what you will about Tamina, but there’s storyline potential there and it would be a shame for it to go to waste
2. Natalya
When it comes to strictly in-ring competition, Naomi’s best opponent she has ever shared the ring with may have always been Natalya. The two have always had impeccable chemistry with each other and typically manage to bring the best out of each other. For Naomi, Natalya is the perfect in-ring dance partner and vice versa.
We think Natalya would agree with that sentiment. In fact, once on an episode of Total Divas, Nattie admitted that she had never “been in the ring with someone as competitive as [Naomi] and as athletic as [Naomi].” We especially think that Natalya would agree after they put on a clinic together at SummerSlam 2017, where The Queen of Harts beat Slayomi for her SmackDown Women’s Title. That feud was far too brief for what it was and especially for what they delivered in that ring.
We would love to see these two enter another feud with each other on the red brand. Preferably without Natalya as a heel. I personally was never a fan of heel Nattie; she always comes off like a genuinely nice human being so it was hard to buy into her try to be this mean, malicious villain. Perhaps her and Naomi could enter a storyline as two competitors who legitimately respect each other and simply want to find out who’s the better wrestler. Give them any excuse to have them tear it up in the ring again, because they always produce magic together.
1. Sasha Banks
It’s a crime to think that Sasha Banks and Naomi have only ever had two one-on-one matches on television since Team B.A.D. broke up. Both matches happened to take place in February 2016 and they were decent matches, but considering the history that both women shared together, they deserved so much more than that. Thankfully, in the wondrous and wacky world of wrestling, it is never too late for anything to take place and with both women on WWE Raw now, now is as good a time as any to commit to this feud for realsies.
If any of these recent rumors are to be believed, Sasha Banks’s future with the WWE appears to be up in the air. At the very least, The Boss appears to be taking a break from the company. Whenever – and apparently, if – she decides to return to Raw, a great ready-made feud for her would be with Naomi. Of course, the history speaks for itself and something interesting can stem between these in The Legit Boss’s return.
More than anything, in a time when Banks needs to find a new footing since her bestie Bayley made the move to SmackDown and Naomi needs to make an impact on the red brand, this would be a mutually beneficial feud for both parties involved.