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WWE added a couple of matches to the WrestleMania card on the latest episode of SmackDown and one of them was a six-pack elimination match for the SmackDown Women's Championship.
Bayley will put her title on the line against Tamina, Naomi, Lacey Evans, Dana Brooke and Sasha Banks but that was never the original plan.
As revealed by Dave Meltzer on the Wrestling Observer Radio, WWE previously wanted the SmackDown Women's title match at WrestleMania 36 to be between Sasha Banks and Bayley.
However, due to the various changes that have happened in the past few weeks, WWE was not left with a lot of time to build-up to the match between the SmackDown Superstars.
The idea was to break up the duo and to have a clash between the two, but the company needed more time to flesh out the storyline and instead decided to book a six-pack challenge. The seeds of dissension were planted as Sasha Banks was shown to be somewhat happy with the title opportunity.
Based on the current storyline direction, either Bayley or Sasha Banks will turn face after WrestleMania and they should ideally have a match against each other later in the year.
Dave explained:
The gimmick is, is that Bayley is all mad about a six-way but Sasha, who is supposed to be Bayley's best friend, first was mad until her name was announced in the match and now she's sort of smiling and so you kind of get that thing. It's actually the kick-off of, you know the company actually wanted to do Bayley and Sasha at WrestleMania, and to their credit, given that there is no time to build it up like literally, this came up a week or two ago, and they just thought, well we just can't do a match after four weeks of no build, so they kind of got it pushed with like, okay, we'll do the six-way which would like be the start and we'll do the singles match when it's not so rushed. So that's kind of where that is.
Banks vs. Bayley has been the long-term plan and it's a smart move from the WWE to hold off on the match as it has the potential to be a classic angle. The WWE creative team's patience should bear fruit and we could see the two real-life best friends possibly face each other at SummerSlam. How does that sound?
