Bianca Belair vs. Charlotte Flair Was Awesome… Until That Finish
This week on Monday Night Raw, Bianca Belair and Charlotte Flair — two of the best in WWE — went head-to-head for the Raw Women’s Championship. It was a spectacle, it was awesome, and it could’ve main evented any pay-per-view of the year… and then we got a cop out finish.
Outside of the last few seconds, the match itself — from the build-up to the momentum shifts to the climax — was a fantastic battle between two incredibly gifted competitors. It was easily the match of the night on Monday Night Raw (even despite the weak finale), and it could’ve been a contender for Match of the Week. (Truthfully, depending on the course of wrestling this week, it could still be.)
The problem was that finish, though. It was an easy way out of putting the Raw Women’s Championship on Bianca Belair. Even then, it hardly made sense as Charlotte Flair was drafted to SmackDown and Belair was drafted to Raw, so putting the belt on Belair would simultaneously mean keeping it on Raw, as well. Of course, some would argue that a Belair win to keep the championship on Raw would’ve been too predictable. In that sense, WWE sort of painted itself into a corner, which is a different problem in and of itself.
It’s a problem that could’ve had several simple solutions, though. First off, a title change would’ve been fine because the Raw Women’s Title should stay on Raw — and perhaps it will, and maybe we’ll see Charlotte Flair making appearances on both Raw and SmackDown while she’s champ. Second, Charlotte has the ability to win clean as well as the smarts to get a dirty win, so she could’ve easily just retained the title by any means necessary, and it would’ve been fine.
Of course, Bianca Belair still has beef with Becky Lynch over on SmackDown. And as much as shenanigans annoy me, it would’ve been a logical solution to this unnecessary problem for Becky to interfere in the match or distract Belair and cost her the title. Yes, it would’ve been frustrating, but it would also have at least made sense.
There’s just no real reason why we should’ve gotten the ending we got to Charlotte Flair vs. Bianca Belair. Hell, if WWE didn’t want to do a title change (which was obviously the case), it could’ve been a non-title match. In this scenario, a Bianca Belair victory would establish Raw’s newest draft pick as a strong competitor and it would give her momentum going into her upcoming SmackDown Women’s Title match against Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks at the WWE Crown Jewel event.
Instead, we got an awesome match between two of WWE’s best that was hampered by an awful finish that saw Charlotte Flair grab a chair and use it to get disqualified in order to retain her championship. This didn’t even lead to any sort of beatdown or proper heel moment for Charlotte, either. Instead, as soon as the ref called for the bell, Belair regained her composure and performed a dropkick on Charlotte and delivered some chairshots of her own. This then prompted Belair to celebrate as Raw went off the air, which, once again, made no sense whatsoever.
Wrestling doesn’t need to be convoluted. A lot of times, it’s the simple yet meaningful matches that are the most entertaining to watch. Bianca Belair vs. Charlotte Flair was a treat up until it wasn’t. It was like finding a hair in the very last bite of your food. It was ruined by a dumb, unnecessary ending, and there were so many directions WWE could’ve gone with it — but instead we got the worst-case scenario.
This Thursday at Crown Jewel, Bianca Belair will get another opportunity at gold when she faces off against Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch for the SmackDown Women’s Championship. It’s hard to say with any certainty what the outcome will be, but it’s likely that Lynch will retain or Banks will win to keep the title on the SmackDown brand. Or maybe Belair will win and we’ll just have the SmackDown Women’s Champion on Raw and the Raw Women’s Champion on SmackDown… because that makes sense, right?
