WWE WrestleMania 33: Analyzing Women's Division's Place on Signature PPV

Where the women sit on the WWE WrestleMania 33 card is a reminder of how long and arduous revolutions are.

Alexa Bliss is set to defend her SmackDown Women's Championship on Sunday during pay-per-view's pre-show in a muddled match. The Raw Women's Championship bout is a Fatal 4-Way featuring the brand's top female stars. Maryse and Nikki Bella will compete with their beaus in a mixed tag team clash.

That's a major improvement from previous editions of The Show of Shows, but WrestleMania's hierarchy is proof that the women's fight is far from over.

The battle for the Raw Women's Championship received decent attention during the build to the biggest show of the year. It was treated like a midcard offering, not one of the event's marquee matchups, though. Maryse and Bella are getting some spotlight but often as add-ons to a feud between The Miz and John Cena.

The SmackDown women have the most to complain about.

Not only did Bliss and every woman on the brand, save for Bella, get crammed into the same match, the title bout is relegated to the pre-show. That's the point in the night where many fans are still finding their seats, where a good portion of the audience at home hasn't yet turned on the live stream.

That's exactly where much of the women's division resided last year when 10 female grapplers clashed in the forgettable Team Total Divas vs. Team BAD and Blonde affair.

Relegating Bliss and her peers' story to that spot is a statement about its lack of importance. There's no chance in hell Roman Reigns vs. Undertaker or AJ Styles vs. Shane McMahon would be pushed down to that part of the PPV. 

Marc Normandin of Cageside Seats wrote, "This kickoff placement is suggesting that no one in WWE except SmackDown's own creative team cares at all about what the blue brand does with its women."

And beyond its pre-show status, there have been issues with the road to the bout as well.

The Styles-McMahon narrative saw a man smash his boss' head through a car window. The Randy Orton vs. Bray Wyatt rivalry has given us arson, a baptism and the desecration of ashes. The chase for Bliss' title has been far less creative and involved. Naming its signature moments is hard because it sorely lacks them.

Indy wrestler Gran Akuma commented on the lack of effort in the construction of the SmackDown women's title match:

Bayley vs. Sasha Banks vs. Nia Jax vs. Charlotte Flair for the Raw Women's Championship has a superior story to what has developed on the blue brand. Tension is building between allies Banks and Bayley, Flair is looking to tear those women apart and Jax is the unstoppable force who has crashed the party.

It's odd, though, that neither Raw nor SmackDown chose to go with a one-on-one women's title match. They both went the "crowded stage" approach.

Will Pruett of ProWrestling.net pointed out a startling statistic:

WrestleMania 32 featured Flair vs. Banks vs. Becky Lynch. The Showcase of the Immortals has stuck its women in tag team matches for the most part before that.

At WrestleMania 29 and WrestleMania XXVII, there were no women's matches at all.

You have to go back to WrestleMania 23 in 2007, when Melina tangled with Ashley, to find a one-on-one encounter between women at the event. 

Banks envisions a future where she and her opponent are on top of the card at WWE's biggest event. She said on ESPN's Off the Top Rope last August (h/t Wrestle Zone), "My biggest dream is to main-event a WrestleMania, and I guarantee you that is going to happen."

She may be right, but WWE will have to start booking women's singles matches at the PPV first. The company will have to trust that Bayley vs. Banks or Lynch vs. Mickie James produce enough enticing battles to not need a host of other characters around them.

Credit: WWE.com

It will have to make the clashes between its women more important than the midcard purgatory that is the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal. 

When the feuds over the Raw and SmackDown's women's titles are given the kind of hype we saw the likes of Chris Jericho vs. Kevin Owens get ahead of WrestleMania 33, that will be a sign of the women's revolution making more headway. 

In the past two years, the WWE women's division has grown enormously. It's a far more important part of the company that it has been in the past. WrestleMania 33, though, is proof that for now, the climb remains uphill. The struggle for prime stage space continues.

WWE Chief Brand Officer Stephanie McMahon was spot on about the situation when she recently appeared on SportsCenter (h/t Diva Dirt). She said, "We still have a long way to go, but we're certainly getting there."