WWE: Despite weak challengers, Becky Lynch is still “The Man”

It’s without question that Becky Lynch has been prominently featured as the face of the WWE women’s division.

Some may argue that it goes further and that Becky Lynch is, in fact, the face of the entire company. Your stance on this aside – it’s undeniable that Becky has become a focal point in WWE’s marketing.

Since WrestleMania 35 in April, Becky has been featured on almost all promotional posters for WWE Pay-Per-View events. More recently, it was revealed that Becky, alongside Roman Reigns will feature on the WWE 2K20 video game cover. A first for the 2K series, as they have never featured a female talent on the cover of one of their WWE games prior to the 2019 release.

Despite clearly there being a huge shift in her presentation in the aforementioned marketing, there are many who question the booking of Becky since that faithful night in April. They raise the issue of Becky’s booking. Has it been effective? And ultimately, the question has to be asked if Becky Lynch has lost steam since winning both respective titles in the main event of WrestleMania.

Becky’s first feud following WrestleMania was with upstart Lacey Evans. Lacey without a doubt has a tremendous character. Lacey is portrayed as a ‘traditional lady’, wearing throwback outfits who is extremely pompous and feels like a certain touch as class is missing from the women’s division. On paper, this was a perfect fit for Becky.

Becky, by going by the “The Man” persona is obviously a contrast to Lacey’s gimmick on paper, so it should have aligned extremely well. Unfortunately, it didn’t.  Sadly, for both women involved, Lacey simply wasn’t ready.

Lacey’s in-ring work was not as good as you would expect from someone who had been given the proverbial nod to feud with Becky. No doubt, this is not Lacey’s fault. She was put into the position, way before she was ready and despite the matches with Becky being average at best, her character work was tremendous. The feud wasn’t clicking with me from day one of the build.

This happened to be on the RAW after WrestleMania 35. Lacey hit her infamous finisher, ‘The Woman’s Right’ to Becky Lynch, and was virtually no-sold, making Lacey look extremely weak in the process. Meaning for the next three months, we had to believe that this character would be able to beat Becky with a move that barely made her flinch the first time it was executed.

Sadly, the feud with Lacey went on for three months. It got extremely messy towards the end, with Seth Rollins and Baron Corbin also getting involved. Notwithstanding this, August comes around with the promise of an exciting showcase match for Becky at SummerSlam (the second biggest PPV of the year), and what do we get? Natalya.

Without a doubt, Natalya is an excellent in-ring worker, however, she has never really clicked with the fanbase. Natalya’s character, in essence, is that Bret Hart is her uncle and she likes cats. That’s what we have to gravitate towards?

The problem with this was we were supposed to take Natalya as a threat seriously, despite her being on WWE Main Event for months on end. Where is the credibility here? Fan excitement was unfortunately low. Fans like myself remember the matches of the summer of 2016 between Becky and Natalya and they were frankly uninspiring.

No doubt, the match should be good, with Becky Lynch positioned as the face of the women’s division, and Natalya (hopefully) getting a little bit of Canadian home support, it will hopefully deliver on the main stage. However, it needs to be asked: Where are the legit opponents?

Becky came off the biggest win of her life at Mania. The casual audience saw three women main event WrestleMania for the first time ever and then, her first feud is with someone who clearly isn’t ready?

From WWE’s standpoint, it should have been prioritized that Becky’s post-WrestleMania stories were fleshed out and she was given the strongest possible talents. I am talking the likes of Shayna Baszler, Sasha Banks (if she would agree), Naomi, Rhea Ripley and even Beth Phoenix (which was heavily teased for a short period).

In comparison, if Stone Cold after WrestleMania 14 was given Phineous Godwin as his first opponent, would his run have been as acclaimed as it was? It’s hard to say. But WWE gave Austin the best talent possible: he got Mick Foley. Someone who had a strong, interesting character and someone who would deliver PPV quality main events consistently.

This is what WWE should have done with Becky. As good as the peak of Becky’s popularity was at WrestleMania, what proceeded it was equally, if not more important.