Welcome to another edition of WWE Heat Index, where one of the biggest stories from the past week is examined under a microscope and picked apart for analytical purposes.
This week, one of the biggest things to happen in WWE was actually a carryover and a repeat from the previous week, wherein the Women’s Money in the Bank Ladder Match was given a redo.
In some ways, this was a good thing. In other ways, what in the world was the purpose behind it?
For those who need a refresher or didn’t see this situation unfold, here is a quick recap:
At Money in the Bank, we saw Becky Lynch, Carmella, Charlotte Flair, Natalya and Tamina struggle to get through a disappointing yet “historic by default of it just happening” match which ended when James Ellsworth climbed the ladder, unhooked the briefcase and tossed it down to Carmella.
There was immediately a backlash for a few different reasons, but the major aspect that was focused on what how frustrating it was that the first-ever women’s ladder match of its kind was effectively won by a man.
Immediately on the pay-per-view, the broadcast team started making references to how this controversy would be addressed on SmackDown, making it obvious that this was done at least in part as a ratings ploy.
Granted, the June 20th edition of SmackDown Live did receive a bump up from the previous week, going from a 0.63 to a 0.85. Whether this was because it was the fallout post-event edition in general or because of the controversial women’s match is something hard to pinpoint, but the possibility exists that this did its job for that week.
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It was announced that there would be a rematch the following week on SmackDown where they would just act as though the previous one never happened because it was apparently too big of a travesty, and it had to be thrown out the record book (outside of the fact that they would continually refer to it as “the second-ever” match of its kind.)
WWE made the situation worse on last week’s episode, though, by pointing out all of the flaws in the storyline. They addressed how it was a no disqualification match and how other Money in the Bank winners weren’t punished for having people interfere on their behalf.
The in-universe rationalisation of why this was never a problem before, but it suddenly was now essentially boiled down to “because.” There was no rational argument.
That didn’t stop WWE from carrying out this ordeal, despite it being something that could have been avoided if the writing team had simply figured out a different way to end the match at Money in the Bank if they really wanted to do a rematch on a future episode of SmackDown.
The motivations were clear; they simply wanted to get people upset and talking in the hopes that they would tune in to SmackDown over the next two weeks to see retribution.
This week, we saw the repercussions of this angle with the rematch taking place, ending with James Ellsworth climbing into the ring and helping Carmella—something he was supposed to be banned from being able to do—but instead of him physically taking the briefcase down, she did.
As a fan of Carmella’s recent work, I have no problem with her keeping the briefcase. She was actually the one I wanted to win, which may be an opinion others don’t share, but we all have our favorites and cheer for different people, which is okay.
Admittedly, I wasn’t even bothered by the original win with Ellsworth helping her out. To me, she’s a heel and for her to win with outside help just speaks to her character’s shady behaviour and poor sportsmanship, not some sexist booking where WWE felt that a woman couldn’t legitimately win the match.
What bugs me, however, is that this was an exercise in futility. Nothing is different now than it was after Money in the Bank except there’s two women’s ladder matches in the history books.
Last week’s episode of SmackDown was incredibly laborious with every single woman in the match having a segment dedicated to them complaining to Daniel Bryan. I’ll never get those wasted minutes back, which could have been utilized to do a multitude of other things that haven’t been accomplished last week or this week, such as helping to promote Mike and Maria Kanellis, giving Tye Dillinger some spotlight, showcasing the missing members of the tag team division or even allowing The Singh Brothers to wrestle their first match in months.
All that talk and all that investment wouldn’t have been as problematic if it had led to some kind of change in the flow, but the end result was quite literally the equivalent of just rewatching the previous ladder match but tweaking how Ellsworth got involved.
When it was addressed on Talking Smack, Daniel Bryan no longer seemed to have as much of an issue with Ellsworth interfering as he did before, despite banning him from the entire arena earlier in the night. The first time, it was an unspeakable travesty that had to be corrected, but this time, breaking the rules was met with the attitude of “okay, well, second time’s the charm.”
We’re back at square one with Carmella holding the briefcase, Naomi retaining the title against Lana, and this means last week’s SmackDown setting up this week’s series of rematches were both pointless. WWE might as well have re-aired the pay-per-view to save themselves the production cost.
Some may argue that it doesn’t matter that these two women’s matches simply repeated themselves and that the important thing wasn’t that something changed from before, but simply that it got people talking and interested to see if it could change.
That argument basically boils down to justifying reruns as being decent creative decisions if the ratings get a bump because all you need to do is get people to tune in next week and it doesn’t matter if they liked this week, last week, or the week before.
Well, unfortunately, the ratings saw a slight decrease from last week, going from a 0.85 to a 0.83, which means less people were interested in actually watching the rematches than they were to find out what WWE would do with the controversy.
Basically, people tuned in, wondering how WWE would address the situation, and when they saw that the answer was to have the same matches happen a second time, they figured “oh, that’s it?” If people were excited at the idea of seeing the rematches as a serviceable answer, the ratings would have gone up, not down.
The good news for WWE is that they can bounce back from this to a certain extent. As mentioned before, the pay-per-view ended with Naomi as champion and Carmella holding the briefcase, which is exactly the same spot we’re in now. This doesn’t change either of those factors.
The downside is that two weeks of SmackDown programming was wasted to spin in a circle and there isn’t much good will to come out of it. The people who were mad that Ellsworth won are still frustrated that a man got involved in the women’s match, the people who didn’t want Carmella to win are still upset, and the people like myself who did want Carmella to win are thinking to themselves “Why didn’t WWE just do the second match the first time?”
If ratings don’t matter to WWE, but the WWE Network subscriptions do, then the pay-per-views need to be prioritised. If the ratings are the priority, then the shows can’t be as repetitive and filled with stalling tactics as they’ve been. If that’s a byproduct of the writing teams not having enough creative juices to figure out storylines without needing buffer months with lazy approaches, then WWE needs to hire better writers.
This first-ever Women’s Money in the Bank Ladder Match was historic just for finally taking place, and the way it was booked did nothing but harm to its legacy, and it didn’t even yield any positive results out of that strife.
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