The WWE Women's Division Deserves Way Better Than Monday's Awful Booking

Lyra Valkyria claims that she has run Bayley out of WWE.

Given The Role Model's undeniable status as one of the greatest women's performers in company history, that should have been a major headline coming out of Monday night's episode of WWE Raw. But unless you have an ad-free subscription to Netflix, it's very likely that you had no idea that Lyra was even in Detroit for the show.

Valkyria powered through a busted nose at Saturday Night's Main Event to defeat her former friend and tag team partner, and then added insult to injury by giving her a Nightwing onto the steel ring steps.

Just speechless...

Lyra Valkyria has absolutely DESTROYED Bayley. 😔 pic.twitter.com/O1nnwQgXJy
— WWE (@WWE) July 19, 2026

There has been a great deal of speculation surrounding Bayley's WWE future recently, with the belief that her current contract is due to expire within the next few months. Many folks interpreted what happened to her inside Madison Square Garden as her send-off from the company.

The chatter is nothing more than hearsay at this point, and with all due respect to the first-ever WWE Women's Grand Slam Champion, Saturday's match wasn't about her. It was about establishing Valkyria's new heel persona and her stellar performance, with blood streaming down her face, was a great first step.

WWE later released a digital exclusive with Valkyria, where she showed off the injuries she sustained against Bayley and then proclaimed that there was now nothing holding her back from heading straight to the top of the company. Except maybe the creative team.

The Women's Division was almost completely M.I.A. on Raw

The new Lyra Valkyria is headed straight to the top! 👀 😈#WWERaw
📍: Detroit, MI
🎟️: https://t.co/kWiR76T2Uq
📺: 8 ET/5 PT on @netflix pic.twitter.com/pnkW42KP87
— WWE (@WWE) July 20, 2026

The follow-up to Valkyria's big win in the Big Apple was a face-to-face confrontation with Women's Intercontinental Champion Sol Ruca inside the Little Caesars Arena on Monday night. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then you were watching the same commercial I was when it happened.

It was during that exchange that Valkyria declared that she ran Bayley out of the company and planted the seed for an IC Title rematch with Ruca at some point down the line.

Ruca, the very woman that Chief Content Officer Paul 'Triple H' Levesque said would main event a WrestleMania one day, has inexplicably fallen out of the spotlight ever since she knocked off Becky Lynch to win the Women's Intercontinental Championship. She rarely gets to cut a promo and has wrestled as many matches on Main Event as she has on Raw ever since her previous victory over Valkyria back on June 8.

When Becky Lynch was the Women's Intercontinental Champion, she was on nearly every show. If she wasn't wrestling, she was cutting a promo, crafting a story, building a rivalry, and was regularly featured on Premium Live Events. The Man has been off of television for several weeks now, and the negative impact of her absence is noticeable.

How can WWE expect Sol Ruca to evolve into a main event player if she's not afforded the same opportunities as the woman she dethroned to become the champion?

WWE SummerSlam is less than two weeks away, and despite the show once again being two nights this year, it appears that Ruca will not be getting an invite to the 'Biggest Party of the Summer'. She will instead be defending her title against Raquel Rodriguez this coming Monday in Los Angeles, a rematch from just a couple of weeks back.

Big Sexy and Roxanne Perez were also in Detroit last night, but just like Valkyria, they only appeared during a commercial break interview. The former Women's Tag Team Champions were not featured in any of the multiple Judgment Day segments, which only added to the absurdity of the evening.

WWE executives often brag that the company has the best women's division in the world, but save for Shawn Michaels in NXT, no one has prioritized booking it that way as of late. The creative effort, or severe lack thereof, behind WWE's female performers Monday night in Detroit was especially atrocious.

Less than two weeks out from the second biggest PLE of the year, the Women's World Champion spent more time focused on Danhausen than her challenger, IYO SKY.

I love Danhausen as much as anyone, but with World Heavyweight Champion Roman Reigns not on the schedule, a much bigger focus should have been given to Liv Morgan and the build to her first title defense since winning the Women's World Championship at WrestleMania 42. That's right, her first one.

The only members of the women's locker room that were featured on the show Monday were Morgan, albeit in multiple segments, IYO SKY (briefly) and Maxxine Dupri, who was ringside for The Vision's tag team match.

Not a single women's match was booked, and no in-ring promos were scheduled, and this came on a night when multiple female talents were in town, several recap packages for Saturday Night's Main Event aired during the Netflix broadcast, and the show ended 15 minutes sooner than usual. Timing was not an issue.

As of this writing, there are only two women's matches currently on the schedule for the two-night SummerSlam next weekend in Minneapolis, and it's hard to imagine any more being added in the coming days. Especially with Women's United States Champion Tiffany Stratton, Jade Cargill, and most likely Charlotte Flair being lumped into the ladder match to determine the interim WWE Women's Champion.

I know booking a major wrestling promotion is not easy. I'm sure there are challenges that come with that responsibility that I've never even thought of, but the WWE women's division deserves so much better than what they were given to work with on Monday.

There's way too much talent in that locker room for this level of creative stagnation, and fans have every right to feel frustrated. I certainly do. Plain and simple, the WWE creative team has to do better. And based on Monday night, that's not a particularly high bar.

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