WWE: 3 fresh challengers for SmackDown Women’s Champion Bayley

Naomi

The only entry on this list to have previously faced Bayley for the SmackDown Women’s Championship is none other than Naomi, but there’s very good reason for the freshness a one-on-one challenge by Naomi could bring to SmackDown. To begin with, let’s look at the last few times Naomi went up against the reigning SmackDown Women’s Champion.

The most recent would’ve been four months ago at WrestleMania 36, where Naomi was one of four challengers in a Fatal Five Way Elimination Match. Before that, Naomi had also challenged Bayley in February, but it was at WWE’s blood-money extravaganza in Saudi Arabia.

Scratching that contest, which is certainly different than your usual pay-per-view title opportunity, you’d have to go all the way back to SummerSlam 2017 to find Naomi getting a one-on-one shot at the SmackDown Women’s Championship. That was the night Naomi lost the title to Natalya, and she hasn’t been a champion since then.

On top of that, as interesting as Deville and Yim would be, no one else has the momentum that Naomi has right now. With a huge fanbase rallying behind her, “#NaomiDeservesBetter” has been trending as fans can see plain as day the opportunities she’s not being given.

Naomi would be the perfect opponent for Bayley at SummerSlam, and could even be the one to dethrone her and end Bayley’s record-setting reign as SmackDown Women’s Champion. There’s no denying Naomi has earned this shot, now WWE just has to get out of their own way and give it to her.