Charlotte Flair wins SmackDown Women’s Championship — now what?

The WWE decided on giving us a surprise on SmackDown Live this week, booking Charlotte Flair to defeat Asuka and win the SmackDown Women’s Championship. But why?

On Tuesday’s edition of SmackDown Live, the advertised match card was supposed to include a fatal four-way matchup between Mandy Rose, Sonya Deville, Naomi and Carmella to determine the WrestleMania opponent of SmackDown Women’s Champion, Asuka.

Instead, Charlotte Flair, incensed by the comments by her WrestleMania opponent Becky Lynch, who accused Flair of being a third wheel in the Raw Women’s Championship match against Ronda Rousey and again railed against Flair’s sense of entitlement, hit the ring to challenge Asuka herself. There would be no No. 1 contenders match for the four SmackDown women, and ultimately, there would be no title defense for Asuka at WrestleMania, either. After 17 very, very good minutes of in-ring action, Flair locked in the Figure 8 submission and tapped Asuka out. Flair is now the SmackDown Women’s Champion.

Wait, what?

There are still a lot of loose ends the WWE must tie up, and they have just one episode each of Monday Night Raw and one of SmackDown to do so before WrestleMania on April 7. Will the match between Rousey, Flair and Lynch potentially unify the two championships, should Rousey pin Flair or Flair pin Rousey? If Lynch gets the victory over one or the other, is that the championship she will then hold, or is this still a Raw-centric title match? And what of Rose, of Deville, of Carmella, of Naomi? Of Asuka? Are they now relegated to having their potential WrestleMania moments come via way of a battle royal? For Asuka, in particular, that feels cheap, unfair and confusing.

While Asuka has spent a considerable chunk of her time in NXT and WWE being a dominant force in women’s wrestling, her last 12 months have been quite the opposite. After having her undefeated streak broken by Flair at last year’s WrestleMania, she found herself part of the Carmella-James Ellsworth storyline and though she became SmackDown women’s champion at Tables, Ladders and Chairs in December, only did so thanks to Rousey’s interference. Granted, that title reign did allow us to see, at times, evidence of the formerly-dominant iteration of Asuka (like tapping out Lynch at the Royal Rumble) but her existence and her championship have both seemed like afterthoughts for most of 2019. And now she’s lost her championship on Tuesday rather than have a successful defense at WrestleMania.

Maybe Asuka’s WrestleMania defense against one, or even all, of the four contenders who were supposed to vie for the opportunity on SmackDown would have proven underwhelming, given that there isn’t exceptionally strong support for any of those four women at present. But does that really matter? Asuka spent 100 days as champion for a reason (and spent 914 days undefeated for a reason). A quick and convincing win is not out of the realm of believability any time she steps in the ring, so that being the case at a WrestleMania event that is already bloated with matches and could reach eight hours long (including the pre-show) isn’t all that big of a problem.

This certainly gives Asuka some sort of advantage in the women’s battle royal, given that it takes place. She’s easily the most formidable of the potential entrants. If there’s actually something to be won here other than bragging rights (like last year, with Naomi), that could be good enough reason to ignite a true, longstanding feud between Asuka and Flair, granted Flair holds onto the SmackDown title after WrestleMania.

But really: What is the point?

Is this just to cut a match from the WrestleMania card while at the same time having a couple more women available for the battle royal? Unifying the two championships doesn’t make sense because, unlike the Women’s tag division which is sparse with established tag teams, there are enough women per show to vie for the respective championships. Is it just a way for Lynch to be Raw Women’s Champion to maintain a must-see feel on Monday nights if in fact Rousey is set to take a break after WrestleMania, leaving SmackDown to Charlotte’s control? Is there a Four Horsewomen vs. Four Horsewomen factor at play, given Bayley and Sasha Banks are the Women’s Tag Team Champions and Rousey’s friends are all in NXT, giving a chance for a cool visual to close WrestleMania this year?

Yes, those are many questions, but questions are really all we are left with after Flair’s victory on Tuesday. And yes, they should all be answered not long from now. But it seems a strange decision to move the belt from Asuka to Flair and make it part of a Flair-Rousey-Lynch story that has already been so needlessly overwritten.