Current pecking order of SmackDown Women's Division

[gl83]

-There have been a lot of changes on television coming out of the WWE Draft, as this week was the first with the new talent rosters across Raw and SmackDown.

The company also started the new programs leading into the Night of Champions premium live event that takes place on May 27 in Saudi Arabia.

One of the new programs is Asuka challenging Women’s Champion Bianca Belair as Asuka turned heel by interrupting and spitting mist in the face of Belair.

Pwinsider Elite has released the internal SmackDown roster listing with the following names as the top female babyfaces: Belair, Charlotte Flair, Shotzi, Zelina Vega, Mia Yim, and Aliyah.

The list of heels included Asuka, Bayley, Lacey Evans, Scarlett, B Fab, and Tamina. It’s interesting to note that in the cases of Scarlett and Tamina, they rarely wrestle at all, let alone on television. Scarlett is primarily used as a manager for Karrion Kross.

Flair hasn't been seen on WWE television since dropping the SmackDown Women's Title to Rhea Ripley at WrestleMania 39 as she took time off. It's unclear when she'll be back on television.




wrestlingnews.co/wwe-news/wwe-has-slotted-asuka-as-the-top-female-heel-on-smackdown

[A Little Doo Doo]

I guess when Charlotte comes back we're supposed to forget her heel turn before WM?

Also, they need to split Damage CTRL and turn either Bayley or Iyo face. The SD face side needs more dependable singles wrestlers (Shotzi's my girl but she's a tag wrestler, same with Zelina and Aliyah. Mia Yim's good, but she's not really over enough yet.)

[Hypnosis]

With Damage CTRL likely breaking up soon, Iyo's not on that list at all?

[Deleted]

May 14, 2023 17:27:26 GMT -5 Hypnosis said:

With Damage CTRL likely breaking up soon, Iyo's not on that list at all?

Guessing they just have them tied to Bayley right now untill they break up.

Also this list means diddly squat because anyone else remember when they had another one of these and Ricochet was apparently the 2nd biggest babyface on SD?.

[dbrussel]

Aliyah wasnt even drafted. I call that list fishy. The men's one looked more realistic.

[Nosnorb]

I assume that for Raw, Mami is on top.

[asuka007]

The heel side of things are, yikes!

Honestly the whole list just shows how incredibly top heavy the division has been portrayed.

[tenshi]

May 14, 2023 17:46:51 GMT -5 Nosnorb said:

I assume that for Raw, Mami is on top.

In the heels side of things, you have Rhea, Trish, Chelsea and Sonya, Emma, Valhalla and Zoey Stark while the faces side has Becky, Liv and Raquel, Nikki, Candice, Indi, Tegan... but Nattie is the one getting a title shot...

[theironyuppie]

May 14, 2023 18:09:09 GMT -5 asuka007 said:

The heel side of things are, yikes!

Honestly the whole list just shows how incredibly top heavy the division has been portrayed.

Yeah, it's an interesting division in that until Charlotte turns, the top heels are all women Bianca's beaten multiple times before. (Bianca's technically also beaten her twice too, but they were via DQ and on Raw back in 2021.)

[asuka007]

And we don’t even know when Charlotte will be back? She seemingly has multiple other interests right now.

I do not blame her there TBC. But WWE needs to book better to compensate for that regardless.

[A Platypus Rave is Correct]

May 14, 2023 17:22:32 GMT -5 A Little Doo Doo said:

I guess when Charlotte comes back we're supposed to forget her heel turn before WM?

Also, they need to split Damage CTRL and turn either Bayley or Iyo face. The SD face side needs more dependable singles wrestlers (Shotzi's my girl but she's a tag wrestler, same with Zelina and Aliyah. Mia Yim's good, but she's not really over enough yet.)

Why not they apparently forgot that Asuka has been heel since like the Royal Rumble...

[EoE: Well There's Your Problem]

The divisions still suffer from being way too small and being booked as if it were way larger. Like, look at the male roster. They have their tippy-top guys and enhancement guys too, but there's a big fleshy middle bit that someone not at the top can use to bridge the gap to it just through sheer number of wins. The women's divisions don't have that. They have tippy-top, which I'd say are Belair, Ripley, Flair, Lynch and (even though she wants to work in the tag division) Rousey, and like three people in that middle bit, which I'd say are Asuka, Rodriguez and Bayley. Everyone else is seemingly enhancement, barely above it or completely new as to not fall into any category yet (the recent NXT callups), and have little or no rub to give at this point in time because they're not going to devote TV time to give those people wins just for that purpose.

And that's even before you account for the genre-awareness of the fanbase beyond the storyline or feud that would be ongoing. To put it simply, TV would tell you that Zelina Vega was a chance of beating Rhea Ripley at Backlash, but us fans on here wouldn't buy it for even half a second, because "Ripley just won the thing, she's not losing it this early" or "They're protecting her for a big match with Belair down the line at a Big 4 show" or other stuff like that beyond that specific scope. And that would probably be true for anyone that Ripley or Belair fights that isn't Flair, Lynch or Rousey.

[mistery]

The interesting thing to point out here though is that Bianca is going to get mixed reactions from fans as well. The fact that WWE has (or had) three PLEs in countries where audiences are more hostile towards her isn't going to help her. We had Puerto Rico where she ended up being one of the biggest heels of the night, we have Saudi Arabia where reactions to her are super mixed at best (and Asuka is very much liked by Saudi fans), and then we have MITB in the UK which is somewhat hostile towards Bianca.

And of course after that we have Summerslam in Detroit which is one of the smarkiest events of the year.

[polarbearpete]

May 15, 2023 4:32:35 GMT -5 EoE: Well There's Your Problem said:

The divisions still suffer from being way too small and being booked as if it were way larger. Like, look at the male roster. They have their tippy-top guys and enhancement guys too, but there's a big fleshy middle bit that someone not at the top can use to bridge the gap to it just through sheer number of wins. The women's divisions don't have that. They have tippy-top, which I'd say are Belair, Ripley, Flair, Lynch and (even though she wants to work in the tag division) Rousey, and like three people in that middle bit, which I'd say are Asuka, Rodriguez and Bayley. Everyone else is seemingly enhancement, barely above it or completely new as to not fall into any category yet (the recent NXT callups), and have little or no rub to give at this point in time because they're not going to devote TV time to give those people wins just for that purpose.

And that's even before you account for the genre-awareness of the fanbase beyond the storyline or feud that would be ongoing. To put it simply, TV would tell you that Zelina Vega was a chance of beating Rhea Ripley at Backlash, but us fans on here wouldn't buy it for even half a second, because "Ripley just won the thing, she's not losing it this early" or "They're protecting her for a big match with Belair down the line at a Big 4 show" or other stuff like that beyond that specific scope. And that would probably be true for anyone that Ripley or Belair fights that isn't Flair, Lynch or Rousey.

They definitely can still use some more talent in the division. Zoey for Raw was a nice add, but Roxanne is also ready in my opinion and should be brought up soon and pushed. Naomi and Sasha leaving and Ronda going to the tag division definitely took out some depth.

[clc]

I don't think the UK is particularly hostile toward Bianca. I think they just really love Bayley over there. So when you have anyone vs Bayley the crowd is going to be singing for "Hey Bayley".
I think Puerto Rico was the only crowd awesome enough to outright boo her!
She still gets mostly cheers. She might not be the crowds favorite, like Asuka and Bayley seemed to get bigger cheers on the Europe tour. Becky generally gets bigger cheers.
I do know if I'm going to a live event, I'm going to boo her, but there will be plenty of little kids screaming E-S-T.

[J is Justice]

Well... at least Aliyah's on the list, lol.

[Lizuka #BLM]

I cannot help but feel bad for Tamina that she's apparently considered a lower priority than B-Fab of all people.

[XIII]

Women’s divisions are a wasteland outside of the top few ladies.

There are tiers:

Top Stars
Women that are over but will lose to the top stars
Screen fillers
Why are they on the roster?


Scarlett isn’t even a wrestler at this point. lol

[Magic knows Black Lives Matter]

Imagine being B-Fab and seeing that you're below the girl who doesn't even wrestle, lmaooooooooo. 

[asuka007]

Scarlett has wrestled like one TV match as well.

You have the unholy combination of Bianca being arguably the most OP wrestler in WWE, Charlotte still getting super booking when she’s there, and WWE putting little effort into anyone else.