Welcome to another eWrestlingNews Question of the Day!
Tonight on SmackDown, there will be a tag team gauntlet match to determine who faces Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez for the Women’s Tag Team Championship at WrestleMania 41.
As far as what’s been advertised, the options are boiling down to: Katana Chance & Kayden Carter, The Secret Hervice (Alba Fyre & Piper Niven), Maxxine Dupri and Natalya, B-Fab and Michin, Pure Fusion Collective (Shayna Baszler & Zoey Stark), and Bayley and the women’s intercontinental champion Lyra Valkyria
My question for you today is “Who do you think should win this match and why?”
Remember to answer with your response in the comments below.
As far as my answer…
Yeesh…this isn’t great. All of these women are talented, but NONE of these teams have any momentum to them. WWE hasn’t bothered to build up any of them as viable contenders. This feels like a situation where WWE would be better off doing a “quantity over quality” thing, and even then, if they were to throw every team in the match, I still don’t think it would have a lot of value on the WrestleMania card.
Let’s be honest and fully transparent here: very few people are going to want to watch this match for any reason other than just to see it because it’s there or to see Liv Morgan. She’s the draw, more than any of the other women, including even her tag team partner, and it’s certainly not going to be to see some super amazing spectacular contest for the women’s tag team titles that has been stewing for a while…you know, like the WWE Tag Team Championship situation would be. But no, I guess The Street Profits vs. Motor City Machine Guns will be snubbed at WrestleMania in favor of this, which also means that both the women’s midcard titles won’t be on the line, either? Who booked this?
Since this is a gauntlet match, they can’t even have more than one team win it, logically, so we have to narrow this down to just one of these pairs.
I think it pretty much just comes down to Lyra and Bayley, because that at least gets the women’s intercontinental champion on the card, as well as Bayley, who is the most prominent name out of this mix.
But does that really matter? Is that worth it? Again, I wholeheartedly think no. They’ve dropped the ball for every single aspect of the women’s division this year, in my mind. Tiffany Stratton vs. Charlotte Flair is a feud that looked better on paper than any of it has executed. Rhea Ripley vs. Bianca Belair vs. Iyo Sky is 100% resting on the potential of their in-ring chemistry for the match itself, as this “push Iyo out of the way over and over” story has been blah. And then, of course, as mentioned, the women’s tag team division is in this sorry state, the women’s midcard champions aren’t defending their titles, and I’d argue Jade Cargill vs. Naomi doesn’t need to be on WrestleMania (and before you say that’s just because it’s a women’s match, I think Rey Mysterio vs. El Grande Americano doesn’t deserve to be on the card, either)
I hope WWE has something interesting as a swerve up their sleeves. If not, and it’s just as straightforward as Bayley and Lyra or the other tag teams winning for a do-nothing go-nowhere zero build match at Mania, then don’t be shocked when people use this as a bathroom break—as if they wouldn’t have already had enough with their THREE HOURS of pre-show each night and their incessant advertisements we’re going to get between matches on the show itself.
This is just another example of how I feel like this year’s WrestleMania fell apart around November and they’ve just been struggling to mash things up as “good enough” in the meantime. It fell victim to the curse of every other Mania being kind of a mess. What a shame. Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez retain no matter who they fight, so let’s see who WWE prioritizes.
What do you think? Drop your thoughts below!
