Liv Morgan is the current SmackDown Women’s Champion. She captured the championship on July 2, 2022 at the WWE Money In The Bank Pay-Per-View. The night was huge for Liv, as she won the women’s Money In The Bank match, only to turn around and cash the briefcase in on the same show against Ronda Rousey to win the gold, which began her first singles championship reign of any kind. Now, this Friday marks 2 months since her reign began. But, is Liv Morgan a failed SmackDown Women’s Champion?
Now, before we go any further, I’d like to point out that this is in no way, shape or form the fault of Liv Morgan herself, but rather a WWE problem. In the grand scheme of things, two months isn’t that long of a championship reign. But, with little to no boost behind the champion, the reign starts to feel like it’s dragging and two months feels like five. We’re at the point where it’s easy to forget Liv Morgan even holds the gold. But, why? Why has WWE done this to Liv Morgan? Well, there is an easy answer. Before we answer the question though, let’s look at why this has been so poor. As I said previously, Liv won the title at the Money In The Bank Pay-Per-View after winning the ladder match and cashing in on the same night. Originally, fans were very excited about Liv’s win. I mean, she got the biggest pop of the night, mixed with the fact that people were clamoring for Ronda Rousey to lose the championship at the time as well. And she did it. The ultimate underdog story. The girl who seems to never win that big one, wins two big matches in one night and wins the championship. The underdog story is a crutch WWE has used since it originally worked out in fantastic order with Daniel Bryan at WrestleMania 30. We’ve seen the underdog story play out multiple times, most recently notable, Kofi Kingston’s WWE title win at WrestleMania 35. But, Liv Morgan is truly the first big women’s underdog story, so it is a bit new to be fair to WWE. So, it started off well. Liv did it. Naturally, after getting cashed in on, the former champion deserves a rematch and in this case, that’s Ronda Rousey. So, what does WWE do? The first SmackDown Liv competed on as champion, it’s in a “championship contenders match” against Natalya. Because, that makes a lot of sense, right? Putting the champion in a contenders match for the championship? Odd. But, Liv won. So, Natalya is out of the picture. That was the only time Liv Morgan competed on SmackDown until the go-home show to SummerSlam which was on July 29th where she teamed with her upcoming opponent Ronda Rousey to defeat Sonya Deville and Natalya. Having the champion and challenger team before a big match is a trope that WWE has used nearly forever, so we won’t speak on that, but, why do you make your underdog champion have only two matches on the brand she’s a champion for in a month? Promos can push stories further, no doubt, but having your champion compete and beat other competitors only makes that champion look stronger, but they barely did it, meanwhile the Raw Champion, Bianca Belair, had three matches on RAW in the month of July and two of them were title defenses. Why can’t Liv get some tune up matches and quick title defenses ahead of her big rematch with Ronda Rousey? Well, because WWE booked to basically ruined Liv Morgan as a viable champion and credible babyface in the strangest turn of events.
July 30th, SummerSlam, Liv Morgan defending her championship against Ronda Rousey in the rematch. And most of you know how dumb the finish of the match was. But, if you don’t, Ronda Rousey had Liv Morgan in a ArmBar submission, which Liv used her leverage in the hold to pin Ronda for the victory. Seems fine, except the fact that before the three was counted, Liv tapped out and the ref didn’t see it. Liv Morgan retained her championship but technically lost the match if the ref would’ve been in position to see her tap out. This caused fans to chant “you tapped out” towards Liv Morgan during her promo on the following SmackDown. Liv Morgan defeated the heel in Ronda at the biggest show of the summer, but due to WWE’s poor booking, they made the fans turn their back on the underdog champion because they made her look like an absolute chump. Your underdog champion tapped out. She gave up. And still sneaked out a cheap victory in her biggest match to date. Now, she’s getting booed on TV. Great booking, right? Liv’s next match was a singles match three weeks after her title defense, where she made quick work of Shotzi. So, instead of having your champion wrestle on TV immediately after the pay-per-view to prove she’s got what it takes, they wait three whole weeks until they put her in there in a quick match. Then, Liv was attacked by Shayna Baszler which received a mixed reaction. The heel brutally beating down the underdog champion and people are rooting for the heel? Obviously something went wrong here. That’s not supposed to be. WWE’s next step? Make a worked injury for the champion and keep her off TV. This past week’s SmackDown on August 26th, Liv was not on TV at all. They also taped this upcoming Friday’s show that same night, where unless they add in a video promo in post, she also won’t be on this Friday’s show either, which also happens to be the go-home show for WWE’s Clash At The Castle event where Liv is set to defend against Shayna Baszler. Two weeks leading up to the big event title defense and you don’t have your main women’s champion on the show?! You don’t build up her match on the go-home show?! Why? What is this logic? And now, you have many people rooting for Shayna to take the title off of her at Clash, due to her reign being so poor. Liv’s reign has been a failure and it’s not any fault of her own.
So, we ask the question, why? Here’s the answer and it’s simple. WWE cannot book an underdog babyface. Time and time again, they’ve failed with this trope. They can book the babyface to get sympathy up until the title win, but once the title is captured, WWE cannot follow up. Bryan Danielson had some injuries and had to leave, but WWE did fail the follow up to Kofi’s title reign with no feuds until he lost in seconds to Brock, WWE failed Big E’s big babyface WWE title win when he also lost in a short reign to Brock, WWE failed Naomi’s big title win when they stripped her after injury which she was out minimal time for and then didn’t give her another title program, WWE wasted a Money In The Bank win on Nikki ASH where they had her cash in and win the title a day after winning the briefcase, then made her look like a chump and lose. Now, they’ve done it again with Liv Morgan. Liv’s story is amplified though, due to how many fans were truly on her side and rooting for her to win and really felt like she was held down, then they book her like hell and accidentally turn half the crowd on her without trying to rectify it. WWE failed Liv Morgan’s title reign and it wouldn’t surprise me if it came to an end this Saturday against Shayna Baszler. Could WWE have Liv defeat Shayna and try to build Liv back up? Of course they technically could, but I don’t trust them to do this because they’ve showed time and time again they can’t book it, or just don’t want to. Maybe Shayna winning, then having a proper Liv title run somewhere down the line is the best bet. I guess we’ll see with the result of Saturday’s match. But for now, WWE failed Liv Morgan as champion and they need to learn how to follow up a babyface title win without screwing the talent over and making them look terrible. WWE, do better.
Be sure to check back with Bodyslam.net for all your wrestling news.
If you enjoy Bodyslam’s content, you can help donate to the site here. You can also visit our PWTees store and buy Bodyslam official merchandise here.
You can listen to all of Bodyslam’s podcasts by following us on Spotify and subscribing to our YouTube Channel, or any of your favorite podcast platforms.
