Becky Lynch says she was not WWE’s choice to be the first SmackDown Women’s Champion, and that she believes the plan was for Nikki Bella to win it.
Lynch was tracing the origins of The Man on the 100th episode of No Contest Wrestling when she went back to 2016 and said the frustration the character was built on had been real for years.
“It was one of those things where I was sick of taking a backseat, and that was kind of real. That angst was real,” Lynch said. “It was always almost getting the shot, never being the one that was picked, never being the one that they were going to hand the ball to and say, ‘Yeah, this is our girl. Go run with it.'”
She then named the title win itself as an example.
“Even the first time that I won the SmackDown Women’s Championship, that wasn’t the plan,” she said. “I think it was meant to go to Nikki Bella actually who, by the way, like a badass, had just come back from her broken neck.”
Lynch said the audience made the decision instead.
“The audience kind of liked me. Once it was revealed, they just started chanting, ‘Becky,'” she said. “So kind of the office had to take notice and go, ‘Well, alright. I guess we’ve got to go with her.’ I don’t think the plan was ever going to be to give it to me again unless I took it.”
The reporting at the time supports her. Three weeks before the show, Cageside Seats reported that Bella was the top choice for the title on the basis that she was the most accomplished woman on the brand, and that the reign was expected to be a short one to establish the championship before it moved on. The same report said WWE had originally looked at Eva Marie, and that the idea died when she was given a 30-day suspension for violating the Wellness Policy.
The championship was created after the 2016 brand split sent Charlotte and the WWE Women’s Championship to Raw, leaving SmackDown without a women’s title. Shane McMahon and Daniel Bryan unveiled it on the August 23, 2016 episode of SmackDown and announced a six-pack elimination challenge for Backlash on September 11 at the Richmond Coliseum in Virginia, featuring Lynch, Bella, Alexa Bliss, Carmella, Naomi and Natalya.
Bella had returned at SummerSlam two days before the title was unveiled, in her first match back from neck surgery, replacing the suspended Eva Marie in a six-woman tag and pinning Carmella.
The match itself went most of the way to the version Lynch describes. Naomi pinned Bliss, Natalya made Naomi tap to the Sharpshooter, and Bella eliminated Natalya, which left Lynch, Bella, and Carmella. Bella went out next. Lynch beat Carmella with the Dis-arm-her to win it.
Lynch said that once she understood the title would not come back to her on its own, she went after it, and that the way she did it is not something she looks back on comfortably.
“I’m not sitting around anymore. I am great, and I am going to claim my greatness,” she said. “Sometimes I did things that, to be honest with you, I regret. I said a lot of mean things. But it was all about selling the conflict, or at least that’s how I justified it to myself.”
She drew a distinction between the two versions of herself.
“It was one of those things that was kind of lightning in a bottle, because the crowd was ready for it, and I was now ready for it in a way that I was not the first time that I won that SmackDown Women’s Championship,” Lynch said. “I was all about, let’s all succeed. And then I watched other people take it and say, this is my time, this is my shot.”
That first reign lasted into November and ended with the title going to Alexa Bliss. Lynch did not hold a world championship again until the run that started with the heel turn in 2018, which is the two-year gap she is describing when she says the plan was never to give it back to her.
Lynch has since held seven world championships and won the 2019 Royal Rumble, and was in the first women’s match to main event WrestleMania that year.
