In this latest bit of breaking news, WWE has now officially announced that SmackDown Women’s Champion Asuka will defend her newly won championship against former champ Becky Lynch at Royal Rumble, next month.
While it seems that WWE recently abolished the company’s in-storyline automatic rematch policy, it makes perfect sense for Asuka’s first pay-per-view challenge to be the ex-champ who Asuka never pinned to win the belt. What does seem a little bit odd is that the announcement was made on – of all places – WWE Main Event.
We wouldn’t be surprised if our readers thought that Main Event had been taken off of WWE air waves years ago. The show never cracks the WWE Network’s Top 10 most watched shows list and we have a sneaking suspicion that the show isn’t even in the Network’s Top 50.
The average episode of Main Event showcases one or two matches that were taped right before Raw went live and features competitors who are too low on the undercard to have a spot on Raw (i.e. Goldust and Curt Hawkins). In the grand scheme of things, the show has never been must-see TV and can easily be skipped without missing anything worthwhile.
Which makes WWE’s choice to announce such a monumental title match on their throwaway brand to be all the more jarring.
This week’s Main Event was a special episode. While it didn’t feature any new match-ups, it served as a recap show for this week’s events, hosted by Scott Stanford. After recapping Asuka’s successful title defense against Naomi on this past SmackDown, Stanford casually announced Asuka’s next challenger.
If this is WWE’s way to get us to start watching Main Event, we’d be lying if we said it wasn’t working. The episode in question – as of this writing – has yet to be added to the WWE Network.
However, we are more than excited to hear that The Man vs. The Empress of Tomorrow for the SmackDown Women’s Championship has been made official for Royal Rumble 2019. It’s expected to be a slobberknocker and an earlier contender for Match of the Year.
For any Hulu subscribers who want to check out the Main Event episode first hand, it can be viewed here.
If the latest addition to the Royal Rumble 2019 card has convinced you to attend the show, tickets for the event can be purchased here.
