WWE SmackDown's Women's Division Continues to Outshine Raw's Star-Studded Roster

To the naked eye, it may appear as though WWE's Raw brand has a superior women's division to its less-celebrated SmackDown Live rival. 

Stars such as Sasha Banks and Charlotte, whom the promotion has fiercely pushed to the forefront through historic matches like the first female Hell in a Cell, would seemingly solidify the Monday night staple's argument for the superior division.

Factor in the presence of wildly popular underdog Bayley and unstoppable force Nia Jax, and you have the core of one of the best women's rosters that fans have seen since the height of Trish Stratus and Lita's popularity in the 2000s.

Yet, eight months into the brand extension, it is impossible not to recognize just how thoroughly SmackDown Live's division has outclassed, outshined and outproduced its red-brand counterpart.

How did a show featuring what many considered the B-level female performers of WWE and NXT earn such acclaim at the expense of the promotion's flagship brand?

Character Development

One of the biggest issues facing Raw's women's division is management's obsession with patting itself on the back for featuring women prominently on the show. Often, commentators Michael Cole, Byron Saxton and Corey Graves are quick to tout the historical significance of two women competing in a given match, headlining Raw or main-eventing a pay-per-view.

So much energy is put into rewarding itself for its evolutionary stance on women's wrestling that the Raw brand has forgotten to properly develop its female stars.

Sasha Banks is known affectionately as The Boss, but why? Charlotte is "genetically superior" and has an impressive pay-per-view win-loss record, but why should anyone care about her beyond that? Only Bayley has been fleshed out to the point that fans can actually invest in her, thanks in large part to her status as a former fan-turned-Superstar.

SmackDown, on the other hand, has taken the female talent it has at its disposal and crafted characters out of them that allow fans to invest in each one individually.

Becky Lynch is the face of the division—the fiery babyface who never backs down from a fight. Alexa Bliss is the lead heel—an egotistical villainess who talks a big game but has proven adept at backing it up. Nikki Bella is the fearless competitor, girlfriend of John Cena, reality star and WWE's golden girl. Her primary rival, Natalya, is the jealous veteran tired of watching those less talented than her earn increased television roles.

Mickie James was a key member of the women's division, helping lay the groundwork for the women's revolution a decade ago, but she was left behind as time passed her by and now is back to reclaim her throne.

Even Carmella has a character, that of a manipulative vixen openly and happily toying with James Ellsworth for reasons and ends not yet revealed.

SmackDown's ability to treat each woman as her own entity rather than grouping them together as part of the Women's Revolution, then patting itself on the back for no longer treating them like a sideshow, has helped its division grow into the vital element of the Tuesday night show it has become.

Screen Time

Even though Charlotte and Banks did, in fact, make history as the first two women to main-event a pay-per-view, the women's division on Raw is still relegated to one or two segments at most. Despite having three hours of television to play with every week, Raw only features six active competitors on its women's roster.

Charlotte, Banks, Bayley, Jax, Dana Brooke and Alicia Fox make up an underachieving division hurt by its lack of depth and unwillingness to present them in a way that does not smack of a sideshow act.

SmackDown features seven women regularly in multiple segments throughout the show. At Elimination Chamber 2017, the brand promoted three matches featuring its female talent and barely mentioned the historic implications of such a move. Instead, those bouts were treated with the same respect they would have been if it was AJ Styles vs. Dean Ambrose.

That has been the strength of the SmackDown division. It's willingness to promote women on the same footing as the men, without calling attention to the fact that they are doing it, has helped with the seamless integration of its female talent into the show.

By devoting as much time to a C-level storyline involving Nikki Bella and Natalya as it has for the ongoing program between Naomi and Alexa Bliss over the SmackDown Women's Championship, it has created equal footing for the Superstars and ensured they are as integral a part of the overall presentation of SmackDown as main event stars like John Cena, AJ Styles, Bray Wyatt and Randy Orton.

Looking to the Future

SmackDown currently touts the superior women's division, if only because of its dedication to presenting it as a genuine part of the show rather than a reason to pat itself on the back. It's wealth of identifiable characters and layered stories have given the division depth.

Raw has not benefited from the same.

Simple storytelling and character development have been sacrificed for the sake of "history."

That will likely not change anytime soon.

Unfortunately for the Monday night brand, a limited roster and seeming obsession to keep Charlotte at its forefront, at the expense of every other female star in the division, dooms it to mediocrity.

Is any of this meant as criticism of the work of the women involved? Absolutely not. Charlotte, Banks and Bayley have repeatedly proven themselves in extraordinary matches. Unfortunately, those matches can be viewed only in a vacuum because the stories leading into those bouts are so mediocre and lackluster that everything leading into or out of them is irrelevant.

That is not the case on SmackDown, where storytelling is key to the overall success of an individual match. Naomi's recent championship victory meant nothing if Bliss had not treated her as an afterthought—the woman who comes close but never wins the big one. Adding that wrinkle to their rivalry enhanced the significance of the outcome and created a highly emotional moment for the babyface.

Raw's insistence on presenting Charlotte as the best has also hurt the promise of change. Fans no longer celebrate a babyface victory much past the initial few moments following the referee's three-count because it becomes apparent rather quickly that Ric Flair's daughter is winning the title back at the next pay-per-view event, where she is 16-0 in championship encounters.

An impending heel turn from Banks and a lack of secondary babyface behind Bayley suggests the Raw women's division will become even more one-dimensional than it already has been, opening the door for SmackDown to continue earning praise and acclaim for its treatment of its superior women's division.