5 theories why Asuka lost the WWE SmackDown Women's Championship

With 12 days to go until WrestleMania 35, WWE produced one of the biggest shocks of 2019 so far when Charlotte Flair defeated Asuka in an impromptu match on the March 26 episode of SmackDown Live to win the SmackDown Women’s Championship.

It had been announced prior to the show that a Fatal 4-Way match would take place between Carmella, Naomi, Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville to determine a new #1 contender for the title, with the winner going on to challenge “The Empress of Tomorrow” in a one-on-one match at WrestleMania 35.

However, in the opening match of the night, Flair cut a promo on her way to the ring and she was soon followed by Asuka, and ring announcer Greg Hamilton surprisingly announced that the two were set to face each other with the blue brand’s Women’s Championship on the line.

The unpredictable match looked as though it could go either way, especially when Flair repeatedly failed to lock in her trusty Figure Eight submission on her opponent. In the end, the WrestleMania 35 main-eventer made the Japanese Superstar submit to her finisher, which means “The Queen” is now an eight-time main-roster champion.

In this article, let’s take a look at five theories why WWE decided to scrap their original SmackDown Women’s Championship plans and take the title away from Asuka.

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#5 Combine the Women’s Championships

Let’s face it, WWE has far too many titles. For the last two-and-a-half years, Raw and SmackDown Live have both had four titles each, while the Cruiserweight Championship has floated around Raw and 205 Live as a ninth main-roster title.

With the introduction of the Women’s Tag Team Championship earlier this year, there are now a staggering 10 titles on the main roster, and you can increase that number to 17 (and 22 title holders in total) if you include NXT and NXT UK.

The decision to have Charlotte Flair win the SmackDown Women’s Championship from Asuka presumably means that both the Raw and SmackDown titles will be on the line in the WrestleMania 35 main event between Flair, Ronda Rousey and Becky Lynch.

If that is the case, then perhaps this will be the start of WWE combining several Raw/SmackDown main-roster titles.

#4 The WrestleMania 35 card is already stacked

A total of 13 matches have been confirmed for WrestleMania 35 so far, and that number is expected to rise if/when a Women’s Battle Royal and Raw and SmackDown Tag Team Championship matches are added to the event.

Even the biggest fans of Asuka and the SmackDown Live women’s division would have to admit that the SmackDown Women’s Championship match at WrestleMania would not have been worthy of inclusion on the main card of this year’s “Show of Shows”.

“The Empress of Tomorrow” has barely featured on Tuesday nights since defeating Becky Lynch at the Royal Rumble, with storylines involving Lynch, Charlotte Flair, Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville taking priority over the SmackDown Women’s Championship.

If Asuka remained champion until WrestleMania 35, it would have felt like a huge demotion for the blue brand’s Women’s Championship to be included in a forgotten match on the kickoff show. At least now it will feature in the main event.

#3 Has anyone been built up enough to face Asuka?

Many fans have voiced their displeasure on social media after the SmackDown Women’s Championship Fatal 4-Way #1 contender match between Carmella, Naomi, Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville was cancelled from this week’s episode of SmackDown Live.

But, with respect to those four Superstars, would a singles match between any one of them and Asuka really have been worthy of taking place on the grand WrestleMania stage? “The Empress of Tomorrow” already faced Carmella and Naomi in title matches in 2018, while she recently picked up victories over the dysfunctional Rose and Deville in the space of two days.

Ideally, somebody else would have emerged from the SmackDown women’s division at just the right time to try to dethrone Asuka at WrestleMania, but WWE prioritised Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair and the Raw Women’s Championship storyline on Tuesday nights, which prevented other blue brand women from staking their claim to be in the title picture.

#2 Is Asuka moving to Raw?

The TLC pay-per-view in December 2018 ended with Asuka holding the SmackDown Women’s Championship above her head after defeating Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair in a TLC Triple Threat match. Granted, she received help from Ronda Rousey, but the fact remains: Asuka stood tall at the end of the PPV.

Since then, with the exception of her statement-making submission victory over Lynch at the Royal Rumble, “The Empress of Tomorrow” has been made to feel like an afterthought on SmackDown Live.

She has only defended her title on another two occasions, against Naomi on SmackDown Live and against Mandy Rose at Fastlane, and neither encounters were given sufficient build-up to make the match feel important in any way.

Perhaps WWE realised that Asuka’s reign as champion was not going as planned, due to a lack of viable challengers more than anything, and they are planning to move her to Raw in the post-WrestleMania 35 Superstar Shake-Up.

#1 More heat for Charlotte Flair

If there is an opportunity in front of Charlotte Flair, she takes it. That has been the whole story of this Flair vs. Ronda Rousey vs. Becky Lynch rivalry from the very beginning, dating back to the summer of 2018 when “The Queen” shoehorned her way into the SmackDown Women’s Championship match at SummerSlam between Lynch and Carmella.

She has since worked her way into the Survivor Series match against Rousey, albeit that was a decision made by Lynch (in storyline), while she was granted another SmackDown Women’s Championship opportunity against Lynch and Asuka at TLC despite already losing multiple title rematches.

The biggest opportunity that Flair received, of course, came when Vince McMahon hand-picked her to main-event WrestleMania 35, even though she had not won a match in three months and she was eliminated from the Royal Rumble by Lynch.

Maybe this decision to give “The Queen” the title was merely another chapter in the ‘opportunity’ story that has been playing out over the last eight months.