wrestling / Columns

Sasha Banks, Charlotte and the Women’s Championship

November 30, 2016 | Posted by Rob Stewart
Image Credit: WWE

How long has it been since WWE last saw a rivalry between two female talents that was intense, compelling, and competitive? The go-to response to that question might just be Trish Stratus vs Lita, the pairing that had the first ever women’s match main event on Raw. And how old would you feel if I told you that the last match those two ever had was in September 2006… over a decade ago! While there have been respectable feuds since those two legendary competitors last locked up, none have truly risen to the heights that Trish and Lita took the division.

That brings us to the present. Since July 25th of this year, Sasha Banks has won, lost, won, lost, and again won the WWE Raw Brand Women’s Championship. Each of the wins has taken place on Monday Night Raw and came against Charlotte; each loss has taken place on a live special event and, obviously, again came at the hands of Charlotte. In the span of four months, these two women have exchanged championship victories over one another in encounters that have been, by-and-large, exciting and satisfying. While the rest of the Raw brand’s women division lags behind and stagnates, these two ladies are doing their best to revitalize, reinvigorate, and yes, even revolutionize womens’ wrestling in WWE all by themselves.

There are two trains of thought in this matter. The first, that these constant title switches are just a way of “hot-shotting” the title around, stopping either lady from gaining any real championship momentum and also devaluing the belt somewhat by making it appear so easy to win. This point of view also looks at the rest of the Raw brand womens’ division and sees how Bayley, Nia Jax, and the rest are languishing. It worries that a returning Emmalina will just be another face left in the background as the Sasha and Charlotte feud dominates airtime. How many more matches can they have before it all gets too stale? How many more firsts can they grab for themselves? The second faction of fans disagrees with this, and—if you couldn’t already decipher this from the theme of this article—that’s the side I fall on.

I personally have been a supporter of this angle, and after Sasha’s most recent capturing of the title, I’m only hungry for more. Predictability isn’t always a detriment to storytelling, but it’s almost never a boon, and while one can say many things about this storyline, it’s having been predictable is surely not one of them. The night after she and Bayley defeated Charlotte and Dana Brooke at Battleground, Sasha won her first Women’s Title on an unannounced Monday Night Raw match that I’d wager few saw coming so suddenly. After having been either Women’s or Divas Champion for ten months, this was seen as the sign that Charlotte was stepping aside to let Sasha take over the division, but Sasha would drop the belt back to Charlotte within a month’s time at Summerslam. Charlotte would hold onto the strap for over a month, including an unlikely victory over both Sasha and Bayley at Clash of Champions, but Sasha would again get one over on her in the main event of Raw one week after that live special. At Hell In A Cell, the two competed in the main event hell in a cell match—a match that virtually everyone saw as Sasha’s coronation and another opportunity for Charlotte to move back out of the title picture—and Charlotte shockingly regained the belt. Fast forward to Raw this week, and again Sasha defeated Charlotte in a falls count anywhere match to win the title after the assumption was that Bayley would be stepping up as Charlotte’s next threat.

Honestly… at this point, I have no idea who is going to win the next contest between these two! If patterns hold true, it seems likely that if it’s on Raw, Sasha has it well in hand, while Charlotte is the likely victor at larger events, but… who knows at this point? Just when it seems that WWE is ready to let one move past her challenger, they swing the momentum back to the other. It’s actually quite refreshing; so often it is easy to see results coming from a mile away, so for WWE to have cultivated a feud where either woman seems like a possible winner in any encounter is worthy of kudos. Will The Boss and Charlotte butt heads again at Roadblock? Probably. Will the match be fought under some kind of stipulation, such as Ladder Match rules? Most likely. But will it be the night The Boss vanquishes Charlotte for good, or will the former champ maintain her unvarnished title match record on big events? Hell if I know.

Beyond just chasing one unlikely win with another, Charlotte and Banks have aspired to bring real heat to this rivalry and get it mentioned in the same breath as the feud in which Lita and Trish participated. Sasha Banks has excelled as a plucky underdog (which is amazing given her seemingly effortless heel charisma) by constantly showing up to challenge Charlotte and seeming to be willing to take any amount of punishment or any kind of bump to get the gold. Charlotte, conversely, has exercised her size and strength advantages all while dismissing Banks as just another women who can’t blemish the Queen’s major events record. The story between them is genuine and legitimate. It’s an angle that absolutely has deserved to main event Raw and Hell In A Cell on its own merits. It deserves featuring in the kinds of matches that WWE women simply don’t partake in, like hell in a cell or falls count anywhere. When Charlotte throws Sasha at (if not through) a table or The Boss whacks Charlotte with a kendo stick, it feels natural because these two have done that good of a job ratcheting up their intensity.

An admittedly strong point of those that are weary of this storyline is that the rest of the Raw brand’s women are seemingly in a holding pattern during all this, but is that really the fault of Banks and Charlotte? Should their story be broken up just to give others something to do? Or should the people in charge get their butts in gear and plot out some background feuds? Smackdown Live has been able to carry out multiple stories for their women’s division… why can’t Raw? Whatever the reason, it’s not on the heads of these two ladies. Have Bayley go back after Nia Jax to resume their still-relatively-fresh NXT rivalry. Get Emmalina back out there and put her up against Dana Brooke for abandoning her. Put these talented womem to work!

In the meantime, where do these two fighting champions go from here? While prognostication is usually not my strong suit, I do see the previously-alluded-to ladder match in their future at Roadblock, with that title bout announced as their last, winner-take-all encounter over the belt. And I see Charlotte furthering her perfect record and dropping the boss to the background. Over the first few months of 2017, Bayley emerges as the next challenger, and she is the one to finally end the Queen’s reign of pay-per-view terror. This leads to Banks growing jealous of her friend doing what she couldn’t. Heel turn for Sasha, Banks/Bayley III at Wrestlemania, the two of them tear Orlando down that night, and Bob’s your uncle.

But there I go trying to predict what these two are heading for again. It’s probably best to just throw what I THINK they’re going to do out the window and just continue enjoying what they actually do.