Leave it to the WWE to make Becky Lynch’s return so correct and, at the same time, so wrong.
After more than a year out of the WWE, “The Man” made his long-awaited return Saturday night during the SummerSlam pay-per-view at the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
At first, a moment of “breaking the glass” was created after Sasha Banks found herself unable to compete in her SmackDown women’s championship match against Belair.
The old booker’s rule is to deliver something equal or superior to the fighter or match that was lost on the card.
WWE certainly did this by retrieving Lynch.
The setup was fantastic. The WWE waited until Belair entered the ring to announce Banks’ absence, and then said he would face Carmella. This left the Las Vegas faithful very, very unhappy for a few moments, but then Lynch’s music struck and the crowd – and all the wrestling fans they saw – lost their heads.
Lynch had been out of the WWE since May 2020 because she and her husband Seth Rollins had a baby girl.
Lynch, 34, pulled out Carmella and then got into a match with Belair that lasted seconds. He shook the champion’s hand, stretched it to punch, and handed out a Manhandle Slam to get the impressive 1-2-3 pin and the SmackDown women’s championship back to the waist. Lynch beating Belair was not the problem, it was almost expected. But how it happened was wrong on so many levels. This felt like Brock Lesnar, who also returned on Saturday, crushing Kofi Kingston on the debut episode of “Friday Night SmackDown.”
What WWE gave its fans on Saturday turned a moment that was supposed to be full of pure joy into something inferior to.
So where did all this go?
First, Belair and Banks had perhaps the best match at WrestleMania 37, so fans were expecting something special again. Lynch then asked Belair to “break the ceiling” with her, further raising fan expectations. But they did not know them. So now the WWE has delivered excessively and insufficiently at the same time. Fifty-fifty reserves to the best of the WWE.
Fans want to win Lynch, but only using lower to higher tactics against bigger heels. So while she’s staining and catching Belair with suspicion, she may have adapted to her character, she should never have been used against a performer the WWE has built as a pure babyface.
Of course, it can be argued that the WWE protects Belair from taking a clean pin, so to preserve another match between the two, WWE has more time to announce it. But if he did well on Saturday, Belair could have left a bigger star if he had shown he was at Lynch’s level in an even five-minute match. Then he could still have played the “you caught me off guard” card for a rematch he now has anyway. This is how you build and jot down your stars. Also, Lynch didn’t need to win squash. Their credentials speak for themselves. If WWE needed time for their SummerSlam match, they should have cut Shinsuke Nakamura’s jam session or the useless Xavier Woods against The Miz and John Morrison.
The WWE could have had Belair’s Carmella pumpkin and then hit Lynch’s music. Pure joy strikes the crowd. The two could have stared or Lynch could have shook his hand and then adorned it. That it would have been better and then you would have established a real match for the first time between Belair and Lynch.
The WWE has devoted a lot of time and effort to building Belair as the main player who needs the women’s division. It was successful in a way that they never allowed Rhea Ripley to do it on Raw. Bayley and Banks also helped as Belair’s opponents over the past year. WWE had an athletic, intelligent and charismatic female star. What do you have now? Belair spent months proving he was equal to Bayley and Banks. Do you have to start over with Lynch now?
The WWE women’s division remains The Four Horsemen and everyone else. Charlotte Flair is again the female champion of Raw, who can set up a Raw match against SmackDown against Lynch in the Survivor series. These two don’t need the belts or that stage for this match to mean anything
Maybe Banks will provide the heel again in this triangle of the SmackDown title? Maybe WWE has taken a corner and Belair has to turn his heel to provide a suitable opponent to Lynch, who probably won’t become the bad guy soon. Belair will fall back on the midfield pitcher or on a team with Lynch with a long reign. None of these options sound very good compared to what Belair was before Saturday.
Maybe, just maybe. Belair’s amount of talent allows him to overcome the WWE’s dubious reserve. Her facial expressions throughout Calvary were all we all watched at home: disappointment when Carmella was announced, shock and excitement when Lynch arrived and startled in disbelief when she lost the title. Belair has enough talent to get it if given the chance.
It didn’t have to be that way. But only WWE can find a way to cushion one of its biggest star’s returns and potentially damage another in the process.