Following the WWE Draft, the company’s women’s division is in a very strange position and it appears the return of Ronda Rousey is only adding to the confusion.
While Rhea Ripley is the current SmackDown Women’s Champion and Bianca Belair is Raw Champion, neither woman is on the ‘correct’ brand. To add to the strangeness of it all, WWE has shown no inkling that they will be switching the titles back to the right brand, and have stopped mentioning it altogether. On the May 12th edition of SmackDown, the blue brand hosted a Championship Celebration for Belair despite her being Raw Champion.
Meanwhile, things are not much more straightforward when it comes to the tag team ranks. In late 2022, Ronda Rousey dropped the SmackDown Women’s Title as she wanted to win tag team gold. However, an injury derailed these plans and the titles were won by Lita and Becky Lynch who didn’t defend them at WrestleMania despite being on the card.
In the weeks after the spectacular, Raquel Rodriguez and Liv Morgan won the titles, but Morgan suffered an undisclosed injury on May 12th, causing a planned title defence on Raw to be scrapped.
Although Morgan is out of action, Ronda Rousey and Shayna Baszler appeared on Raw for the first time since being drafted to attack Rodriguez. This is seemingly to set up a match at Night of Champions – injury to Morgan permitting.
Writing in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer added that there’s also another complication, Ronda Rousey had planned to take time off and her Women’s Tag Team Title win was supposed to lead to a bigger storyline.
“The women’s tag title obviously depends upon the severity of Morgan’s injury. The women’s tag titles have been cursed since Rousey & Baszler were supposed to win them at Mania and the titles were only step one in a longer-term Rousey storyline. The timing of this is an issue because Rousey is planning on taking time off at a certain time frame which was prior to WrestleMania, and the story was to end well before that.
They would have to speed up the storyline if Rousey doesn’t extend her stay because the original plan was to establish the team as champions for a while and then do the actual storyline that this was to build to.”
Ronda Rousey Pushed To Compete At WrestleMania Despite Injury
Ronda Rousey hasn’t wrestled since stepping into the ring — albeit very briefly — at WrestleMania 39. Heading into the event the star was struggling with a fractured arm, but it has been reported that she pushed to compete in the match despite the injury.