IYO SKY Saves the Night For WWE Women’s Division at SummerSlam

There is a new WWE Women’s champion and her name is IYO SKY.

One year after debuting on the main roster alongside Bayley and Dakota Kai, Sky cashed in her Money in the Bank contract pinning Bianca Belair to win the title. This was moments after Belair won the triple-threat match with a big leg.

And again, Belair is on the short end of the stick at SummerSlam. Remember here on Full Press Wrestling we wrote about how Belair lost the title to Becky Lynch at SummerSlam in 18 seconds. Not fair to her as Becky’s return was booked poorly.

Thankfully a night with two poorly placed women’s matches was saved by the cash in by IYO Sky, aka Io Shirai.

There has been a lot of talk recently about the women’s division not only in AEW but WWE as well. Over the past several weeks and months, people have been clamoring for each company to book their women’s division better.

Especially given there was a big match taken off the SummerSlam card as Becky Lynch was supposed to take on Trish Stratus. That was a match everyone was looking forward to. It was a culmination of a story. This story has been brewing since Wrestlemania when Trish turned on Becky and Lita. However, these ladies have to wait until RAW in Winnipeg to have the match because of time constraints on the show.

That is a cop-out because the event went four and a half hours. There was time, but they did not want to cut other matches time. Roman Reigns and Jey Uso went 35 minutes. The WWE Women’s Championship match went 25 minutes, plus the cash-in. And a match which we will get to later on Shayna Baszler vs Ronda Rousey was not needed.

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Then there is Rhea Ripley, the Women’s World Heavyweight Champion. Ever since she won the title, she has only had a couple of title defenses. No fault of her own. Just challengers ready. Her match with Raquel Rodriguez was taken off SummerSlam because, in storyline, Raquel is not ready.

So WWE was left with two women’s matches that were placed in such a poor way the audience could not get into the match. The Rousey/Baszler match came after the Battle Royal, not to mention the MMA Rules match needed to be in a cage not in a ring. WWE should have brought back the Fight Pit.

WWE totally disrespected a Hall of Famer and future Hall of Famer. Now some people will say what’s more disrespectful having a short match to end a feud or not on the card at all. And that is a fair point, but still, it seems Becky gets the short end of the stick, not to mention Bayley too. Once again, Becky has to play second fiddle to Rousey. That feud was never settled one on one either, especially when Becky was at her peak.

Becky should have come out on RAW and talked about how she pinned Stratus and moved on to her next feud instead of continuing the story.

The WWE Women’s Championship was a good match that was 10 minutes too long. Not to be critical. Again women’s wrestling is great. But it was a long match. Bianca sold her knee so well. But the real story was Charolette Flair trying to win another championship. And this match was right after Seth Rollins and Finn Balor. It was in the death spot right before the main event.

Something has to be fixed. Now at least WWE did the right thing with the cash-in. The women’s division needed a fresh champion and DAMAGE CTRL needed a big win. IYO Sky got it.

This was the only saving grace on a night where the women’s division was not appropriately showcased.