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The new batch of NXT UK episodes have ended, yielding a fantastic match-up between Toni Storm and Rhea Ripley. The two former Mae Young Classic competitors including this years winner tore the house down to determine the British brands' inaugural woman's champion. In a stunning result, the brash Ripley came through giving the babyface Storm a perfect target to chase for the coming year.
Though stalled by technical issues, NXT UK is off to a great start along with its burgeoning women's division bound to grow tenfold in the next few years. It's the perfect microcosm to the growing affinity for the women's division across the board in WWE and the quality produced by its combatants on a daily basis. This is after all the year where the all women's PPV Evolution shined head and shoulders above a myriad of inconsistent programming, barring NXT.
With a rumoured Women's Tag team title to join the ranks, the championship cabinet in WWE for the formerly known Divas has never been stronger. As such it would be interesting to examine this lineage of the women's championships and figure how each one and their respective originators AKA first champions have led to the current explosion of the women's Evolution.
Ranking the six different women's championships across the history of the WWE according to their inaugural champions is no mean feat, but we shall try.
Unranked: Rhea Ripley, NXT UK Women's Champion
Of course, it would be unfair to rank the latest addition to the championship column of WWE's women's division. The seventh women's title to introduced to the company just crowned its first champion. Ripley is a stellar banter fighter to begin the lineage of this title, carrying it with a heelish swagger, as a great foil to the face of the division; Toni Storm.
There's a great amount of talent to elevate this championship in the NXT UK Division. Apart from the aforementioned Ripley and Storm, there is the starlet Xia Brookside (daughter of British stalwart Robbie Brookside), Charlie Morgan AKA Yasmin Lander who's well-traveled. Apart from that, there is hardcore fighter Killer Kelly and above all else current PROGRESS Women's champion Jinny.
All that talent just adds tension to Ripley's nascent reign, if she were to or not even fight them back the truth is this title will no doubt shine. NXT has become a beacon of hope in WWE including its women's title, the same will come true for the UK version with a game Ripley at the helm. Watch out for this championship and brand, it's going to rock!
6. Velvet McIntyre and Princess Victoria, WWF Women's Tag Team Champions
WWE might get ready to historically announce its first Women's tag team titles, or so Stephanie McMahon will tell you if ever the rumours come true. Yet WWE had Women's tag championships in the past, around the time they cut away from the NWA.
While Women's wrestling was then seen as a speciality, the championship existed and so with an intriguing bunch of undercard talents. The hilarity of which is that the championship only ever changed hands on House shows with the occasional Royal Rumble shot. The inaugural WWF version of champions being so when they defected from NWA.
Nothing really mattered about the title or their reign, especially the unfortunate loss that saw Princess Victoria injured and retired. Though Velvet found a partner in Desiree Peterson, the championship really didn't get going any which way despite a more than year-long reign for the first go round.
5. Michelle McCool, WWE Divas Champion
Introduce in 2008 as a parallel to draw for RAW's women's championship, despite its design it seemed WWE was taking women competitively especially on the blue brand. How wrong fans were, instead of in just two short years the butterfly championship became the de-facto title for the women's division.
A symbol of WWE's horrid usage and representation of dark time in women's wrestling, the championship traded hands between the who's who of glam models; some of which who could barely do a basic throw. It's not an indictment of the women though, more so of WWE's treatment of them. Thankfully at the peak of the Divas revolution, the championship got binned to give way to the women's evolution.
Surprisingly its first champion Michelle McCool actually had proved herself a competent wrestler especially in a class of women unable to keep up. Her lengthy reign set an even tone, unfortunately, buoyed by incompetent reigns rife with injury sending the title sputtering into doom at the advent of the fourth wave of feminism. By then the rabid universe had made the women's division, its designated toilet break. Still, McCool did try, for a moment.
4. Becky Lynch, WWE Smackdown Women's Champion
The Becky Lynch of today is an anomaly, unbelievably rising through the dredge of poor booking of the past two years she has overturned exciting but tone-deaf plans by management to become a supernova among superstars.
This isn't the same Becky Lynch we got at the infancy of the Smackdown Live brand of 2016, thankfully that one wasn't the wasted product after her title reign ended either. Instead the Lynch of 2016 that went on to become Smackdown's first and rightfully women's champion, was the straight firewoman who could be a solid mid to upper-card hand in what is generally a men's division (with too few women, the division lacks any form of a real mid-card).
Clearly now she is 'The Man' and the route to get there lies in her first unfortunate reign, making it an all-important pit stop for her character. It didn't do much for the championship though that has seen an up and down rollercoaster ride until her second clincher this past summer. Instead, Lynch and her reign will forever remain the one that could have and instead might have changed the face of women's wrestling in the WWE.
For what that's worth if the title itself can reach the same destination then it'll definitely shoot up higher than before on the all-time list. Till then the past version of Lynch holds this one down, ironically while 'The Man' currently sets it apart.
3. The Fabulous Moolah, WWF/WWE Women's Champion
Revisionist history adds fascinating elements to how we may perceive older records. In isolation, the women's championship might be on the top of this list despite its maligned treatment through some dark years. Yet as we are ranking the championship according to the initial reign, it is particularly hard to even place it somewhere on the third spot.
This isn't an indictment of Fabulous Moolah. Solely on ring acumen, once more this title would reign at the top if we were to just look at her in-ring accomplishments as the first champion of the division. Sadly her actions outside the ring enforce one to think through whether anything matters at all.
This is because Moolah's heinous acts outside the ring whether one likes it or not affect the very perception of women in the work environment of a typical man's world. That Moohlah who could have been a beacon of women's inspiration decided to act as she did to sell off her own roster of young girls looking up to her, shows how this kind of rampant actions let patriarchy reign in not just wrestling but the world itself in general.
However even then the lineage of the title cannot be denied, marred by the acts of one no matter if she were the first, cannot diminish the efforts of the rest; a cavalcade of legendary women's wrestlers that paved the way. It shines a ray of hope on the idea, that the title does not make the woman at all nor is it made by it, but stands strong through the sands of time.
2. Charlotte Flair, WWE RAW Women's Champion
In that case, the ranking of WWE's RAW Women's championship might seem hilarious but it is, after all, a symbol of WWE's shunning of old ways. The title introduced with a parallel lineage to the original women's championship, as the women's championship got off to the utmost poetic of starts.
Contested between three of the four horsewomen (the evolution of the Divas revolution) at Wrestlemania 32 in a show stealer with the winner emerging the new and first champion. Eventually, the brand split saw this title take a turn and adopt the RAW name to its title. That doesn't change the fact that this thriller birther a new day for WWE's women's division.
While many would have wished for a new champion to emerge with the brand new title in tow, in retrospect Charlotte Flair's ascension to her throne with the red brand championship signalled a fortified and slightly undoubtedly face to the division. This is a woman who after all with the title in hand ended up honing her skills such that she has given many incoming women to the division, their best matches yet.
The Charlotte we see today might not have become thus had it not been for this reign and while debatable we might never have even seen the all women's PPV that was Evolution.
1. NXT Women's Championship: Paige
Much like the Divas revolution acted as a precursor to the women's evolution, the current main roster women's championships and wrestlers specifically the Four Horsewomen found their predecessors on a little brand called NXT.
At its infancy, NXT seemed like a flashier big brother to the former development territory of FCW. Yet burning within it and by extension, Triple H was the desire to revive the hackneyed face of WWE programming. This couldn't have been more abundantly clear than with its women's division and at the helm of it a young and feisty Britany Knight.
As Paige, her championship establishing 300 plus day title reign put a stamp on its value against the brittle butterfly belt over on the main roster. Despite great efforts from Nikki Bella and AJ Lee, they just couldn't match the content on NXT and its women's division giving birth to the moniker #GiveDivasAChance.
The title has not only changed the face of the business for the women in professional wrestling but elevated it to a whole other game. With a blistering tag team division and a men's division forming a who's who of indie stalwarts, it is the women's division that history will remember as the crown jewel of NXT.
This all began with that NXT Women's Championship and the young Paige.
