WWE Rumours: Backstage info on Charlotte/Bayley feud and the Women's match from Roadblock
The rivalry between Charlotte Flair and Sasha Banks for the Raw Women’s Championship came to an end at Roadblock: End of the Line, when Flair made Sasha submit to the Figure 8 Leglock. Their Iron Man match at Roadblock brings an end to their six-month rivalry on the main roster, but it almost ended sooner.
According to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and Wrestling Observer Radio, the WWE had plans to move on from the Flair-Banks feud and move Flair into a feud with Bayley, but the WWE decided to hold off on that in order for their feud to climax at WrestleMania.
The idea going forward is that the feud between Flair and Bayley will continue to pick up steam over the next couple of months and will showcase these women in two of WWE’s biggest PPVs.
Also read: Predicting Sasha Banks’ next 5 opponents
News has also surfaced that Vince McMahon was never too keen on Sasha Banks and that her title reign wasn’t supposed to be a long-term plan.
This puts to bed any rumours of Banks and Bayley fighting for the title at WrestleMania and attempting to recreate the magic from some of their highly-praised matches from NXT.
Despite not being too high on Banks, its was reported that McMahon had expected the crowd would be full of energy while counting down the last seconds of the match and for them to be shocked when Banks tapped out, but the crowd was not as invigorated as he had hoped.
Banks will now be heading into a feud with Nia Jax, who had attacked her on Raw last night. Here’s a clip of the attack:
This feud between Bayley and Flair will be Bayley’s second attempt at winning the Women’s Championship since her debut in August. Her first opportunity was back in September in the triple threat match at Clash of Champions.
Since her debut, Bayley and Flair have only faced each other twice on the main roster in singles competition with the first time being on September 5th, 2016.
Bayley and Flair first fought against each other in NXT back in June of 2013. Since that time, Flair has won the majority of their singles encounters, with Bayley only having one victory from NXT to her name.
Once the year ends, the WWE will need to keep the fans invested in the Bayley-Flair feud for at least three to four months for it to culminate at their biggest show of the year. Whether they manage to or not, there’s a very high possibility that Bayley will be the new Raw Women’s Champion by WrestleMania 33.
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Also read: Predicting Sasha Banks’ next 5 opponents