The Four Horsewomen were at the forefront of redefining women's wrestling in WWE since their days of wrestling each other in NXT. While the fortunes of each member have waxed and waned over the years, they're usually in the thick of the title scene at any given WrestleMania. This year is no different.
Becky Lynch is set defend the Raw Women's Championship against Shayna Baszler. Women's Royal Rumble Winner Charlotte Flair will challenge Rhea Ripley for the NXT Women's Championship. Those two matches had good builds with main event-level matches setting them up. SmackDown Women's Champion Bayley and her long time tag team partner, best friend and sometimes rival Sasha Banks's 'Mania match did not.
Compared to Charlotte and Becky's title matches, Bayley's match has been hastily thrown together. One reason for that had to do with something out of WWE's control: the response to COVID-19. The segment where Paige announced Bayley's Six Pack Challenge opponents was pushed back a week due to travel issues. The underlying issues with the SmackDown women's title scene run deeper, though.
Bayley hasn't had a WrestleMania-worthy challenger built for her. Her feud with Lacey Evans was blown off at the Royal Rumble, while feuds with Carmella and Naomi were rushed through during the build to Super Showdown.
A possible feud against Banks, with whom Bayley had a classic match at NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn in 2015, would have been the biggest match WWE could have booked for the SmackDown title at 'Mania. An injury wrote Banks out of the Women's Rumble, reportedly so she could appear in Season 2 of The Mandalorian. That eliminated the best chance to set up a Bayley/Banks feud with any kind of build.
Frustrating booking of Bayley and Banks has been a constant of WWE for years. In 2018, a feud between the two was teased for months. It felt like they were betraying each other on a weekly basis, only to be back together by the next episode of Raw.
A series of vignettes with Dr. Shelby, who memorably led anger management sessions with Kane and Daniel Bryan, eventually led to them becoming friends again. They became a dedicated tag team without anything to fight for until WWE finally created Women's Tag Team Championships in 2019.
Banks and Bayley became the inaugural WWE Women's Tag Team Champions at Elimination Chamber 2019. Their reign was short lived, as they lost the belts to the Iiconics at WrestleMania 35. Banks would take a sabbatical from WWE following that show, not returning until the night after SummerSlam.
In the time Banks was inactive, Bayley became a dominant champion on SmackDown. Banks' return led to the once impossible scenario of Bayley turning heel. She abandoned everything that made her stand out since NXT, going as far as hacking the inflatable tube men that were part of her entrance to pieces with an ax.
The momentum of that turn was diminished by a handful of things. The biggest was the pause on any feuds on a given show in favor of the "battle of the brands" themed Survivor Series, which added NXT to the mix. Bayley and Banks were primarily used to put over NXT talent, including taking falls in triple threat matches at Survivor Series itself. Banks lost the decisive fall in the Women's Survivor Series match while Bayley took a fall against Shayna Baszler in the main event Women's Champions match.
The Survivor Series build also put building a challenger for Bayley on hold. Lacey Evans eventually stepped up, and feuded with Banks and Bayley until the Royal Rumble, but that mainly showed that Evans wasn't ready for that kind of spot.
The SmackDown women's division hasn't had the kind of mid-card that Raw or even NXT have. Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville have been the only characters to gain any traction on that level, and they've been too busy with the Otis and Mandy romance angle to contribute much to the women's division.
Bayley is in a strange spot on SmackDown. She's been a dominant champion since May of 2019, when she defeated Charlotte for the title at Money In the Bank. Since that time, she's only been without the belt for five days, holding it for a combined 309 days, counting in two reigns. She was the first Triple Threat and Grand Slam Women's Champion in WWE.
In spite of all that, she's clearly been lost in the shuffle in WWE's hierarchy. After taking the fall to Baszler at Survivor Series, her place in the Women's Championship pecking order has been confirmed. Both the Raw and NXT Women's Championships matches at WrestleMania are more important than SmackDown's. It's a shame to see the SmackDown belt treated as such an afterthought two years in row, after Asuka dropped the belt to Charlotte weeks before last year's WrestleMania.
That's not to diminish the competitors in those matches. After main eventing last year's 'Mania, Lynch and Flair are two of the biggest stars in the company. After dominating for years on NXT, Baszler looks like she could be a top heel on Raw. The woman that ended her NXT run, Ripley, looks like she could follow in Lynch and Flair's footsteps and become WWE's next top female star. Despite all that, it's hard not to be disappointed that Banks and Bayley have never had the same opportunities to excel at the biggest show of the year that everyone, from fellow Horsewomen Lynch and Flair to the likes of Ronda Rousey and Nia Jax, have.
Bayley's booking, and the nearly non-existent Women's Tag Team division, makes a powerful case against the brand split. Splitting the women's talent between three shows (now that NXT has transitioned from developmental show to a full fledged third brand) has spread it too thin. It's hard not to find a division with the Horsewomen, Baszler, Ripley, Asuka, Kairi Sane, Io Shirai, and many others vying for championships more appealing than the current spread-too-thin status quo.
The only remedy for this is a draft/Superstar Shake-Up, which would inject some fresh blood into the various rosters they sorely need. Whether it's the traditional Raw and SmackDown after WrestleMania shows or a later date, when WWE can hopefully perform in front of crowds again, a feud with NXT alumni like Tegan Nox and Toni Storm could help give Banks and Bayley a chance to shine again.