Could an all-women’s WWE Network show be possible?

WWE has gone from only a handful of talented women wrestlers to a stacked roster. With so many performers fighting for the top spot, and only so many opportunities to be featured, could an all-women’s show be the answer?

The women’s evolution brought about change to the WWE in a big way. Women’s wrestling has seen so many firsts in the past couple of years and it all culminated in the biggest milestone of all: the main event of WrestleMania.

But for every woman featured in the top spot, it seems someone inevitably takes a back seat. Unless a performer can cement themselves as a top draw it becomes a game of musical chairs for those who’ve been around for awhile, or others who haven’t yet established themselves. A lot of great talent is “stuck in catering” waiting for their turn. This is what happens when the storylines revolve solely around the belts.

The men’s roster has the WWE Championship, a United States title, the Intercontinental Championship, a Universal title and two sets of tag titles to fight over on both Monday Night Raw and SmackDown Live. But they also have blood feuds that build up Superstars to put them in line for a future championship match. The women have the Raw and SmackDown titles as the main focuses of their respective brands. And even with the return of the Women’s Tag Team titles there isn’t enough focus being put on athletes who are climbing the roster to get their top spot.

Women are just being handed title shots for no other reason than management said so. That’s not compelling TV. Audiences want to see them earn a title match. Fans have clamored behind Becky Lynch because she really did fight her way out of obscurity and back into the title picture. It’s those come-from-behind stories that draw people in, but the matches on the main roster aren’t taking time to do that. Even with five hours of programming each week (not counting 205 Live, NXT and NXT UK) everything feels rushed and there’s no time to get emotionally invested.

But what if the women had an hour a week to themselves? Could a WWE Network program devoted to the women’s brand be the answer?

There’s been a quiet debate raging about an all-women’s WWE Network program for some time. Proponents of it say it would allow underused talent to showcase their skills, where others believe it would hurt the evolution of the women’s division to take them off the main roster. But what if a compromise was made?

WWE Hall of Famer (and arguably the best commentator in the business) Jim “J.R.” Ross once mentioned on his Ross Report podcast an idea to get the 205 Live performers over on the main roster. Ross believed that dedicating a segment on both Raw and SmackDown Live to feature the talent from 205 Live would allow audiences who don’t watch the Network show an opportunity to get to know the performers. This way when they open the pay-per-view programs, and dazzle the crowd in spectacular fashion, the audience knows a little bit about who they’re watching and they become emotionally invested. The same could work for the women’s division and the female Superstars have proven they can hold a show on their own with 2018’s Evolution PPV.

Pulling the women from the main roster could be a step backwards. Ideally, they should still have their dedicated time on the television programming, but also including a brief lead-in package of what occurred on the Network program could help to build the roster’s following even stronger.

For example, the women’s tag team scene is still in its infancy and it’s already hurting. There’s only a handful of established teams, and with the confusing split of Boss n’ Hug Connection, a possible disbanding of The Riott Squad, and Nia Jax on the shelf with injury, that leaves even fewer teams fighting for the gold. There used to be random tag team matches held on Raw and SmackDown to feature as much talent as they could. Now they have their Women’s Tag Team Champions, The IIconics, wrestling (and losing) in singles matches.

There’s no build-up of the tag division unless you look towards NXT, where they’re establishing duos like Kacy Catanzaro and Candice LeRae, or Marina Shafir and Jessamyn Duke. But the only time we’ve seen the women’s tag titles in NXT was when Sasha Banks and Bayley dropped by to state they’d face all challengers across all brands, only for them to drop the titles a month later and then be split apart.

Potential teams like the pairing of Carmella and Naomi as “Fabulous Glow” never got a chance to get off the ground after Elimination Chamber. Instead, they sent Naomi over to Raw to try the catering on that brand. Her short-lived angle with Mandy Rose was in poor taste but at least it was an attempt at a story that didn’t include the title. Natalya also had a noteworthy angle with Ruby Riott over the desecration of her late father Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart’. This story also made people cringe but it put some emotion behind their match at TLC and gave Riott her first big singles angle.

One hiccup of an all women’s Network program would be pulling talent from NXT and NXT UK. Those brands can’t afford to be poached of their female talent at the moment, unless you’re looking at making them an all-boys club which puts the women back to square one by not being featured on these brands.

So if an all-women’s Network program is not the answer, something else should be done to utilize their current talent better than just having them do random enhancement matches to build the championship match. And they can certainly come up with better storylines than adultery and disrespecting the death of a Hall of Famer while they’re at it.

The floating title approach could work in theory. We currently have Lynch as dual champion, appearing on both Raw and SmackDown. Perhaps if they were to unify the titles and have the champion float brands, much like the tag titles, it would open up some air time for the other performers to build momentum.

An all-women’s brand on the WWE Network raises a lot of questions. Will we ever get those answers? Probably not, but it’s something to think about.