Opinion: WWE has overbooked the Women's WrestleMania Main Event
The road to WrestleMania 35 has been anything but simple as WWE has made the first-ever Women's main event between Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair and Ronda Rousey a complete and utter mess.
There has been some debate amongst fans where this storyline began to decline, but tonight's episode of SmackDown Live has brought new meaning to the term "jumped the shark."
With no buildup or explanation, Asuka was booked to defend her SmackDown Women's Championship on a show where she was supposed to determine her challenger for WrestleMania.
As many expected but very few wanted, Flair defeated Asuka to win her eighth title in the company - despite already being booked in the biggest match possible for WrestleMania.
Asuka will now have to pick up the pieces following her second loss to Flair in a big match setting, but an even bigger story coming out of this show was how the main event of WrestleMania became the headcase that it is currently.
Let's start from the beginning, shall we?
The plan
WrestleMania 34 saw Flair retain the SmackDown Women's Championship against Asuka in a phenomenal match while Rousey had a successful and impressive debut - all while Lynch was wrestling on the pre-show.
After the show ended, a report emerged that Rousey vs. Flair was in the works for WrestleMania 35 and was being considered for the main event.
Rousey and Flair would go on to become the Raw and SmackDown Women's Champions respectively at SummerSlam, with the company clearly illustrating that two of their best athletes were rising to the top at the same time.
However, Lynch's popularity would throw a wrench in WWE's plans for MetLife Stadium as she surpassed Flair in popularity and rose to the top of the company as a disgruntled babyface.
This eventually leads to WWE including Lynch in their WrestleMania plans, but the next steps would be where WWE made their biggest mistakes.
The execution
After losing to Asuka earlier in the night, Lynch would take the place of an injured Lana in the Women's Royal Rumble and eliminated Flair to win the match.
The next night on Raw, Lynch wasted no time choosing Rousey as her opponent for WrestleMania in a segment that can only be summarized as "electric."
At this point, it would make perfect sense for Flair to dispute her loss at the Royal Rumble and be added to the Raw Women's Championship match at WrestleMania.
A simple yet serviceable road to the match both the fans and the WWE wanted.
Instead, we spent a month focusing on a knee injury to Lynch that was never real while Triple H, Stephanie and Vince McMahon unnecessarily injected themselves into the storyline - less than a month after they promised to stop injecting themselves into storylines.
Lynch was pulled from the match and replaced by Flair, which ultimately led to Rousey turning on the fans and Lynch being added back to the title match at the Fastlane pay-per-view, but only after Rousey basically won Lynch her title opportunity back.
The conclusion
And when you thought it couldn't get any more convoluted, the WWE have Flair beat Asuka to become the new SmackDown Women's Champion, thus throwing another title into the mix for a main event that didn't need anything else added.
The idea behind this decision was that Flair will pull double duty to protect her from her inevitable loss at WrestleMania 35 - a thought process that makes no sense when you consider that WWE had the power to end Flair's streak of losses, that began in December, at any time, yet chose to maintain her losing record until they were two weeks away from their biggest show.
Flair may have more momentum heading into WrestleMania, but this comes at the expense of Asuka, who may not get the title back at WrestleMania if the company announces a separate match for the title,
The main event of WrestleMania 35 will probably be fantastic and one of the best women's matches of all time, but the road that got us here was way rougher than it needed to be.