With Regards to Cole, I wouldn't mind if he lost his belt to set up a UE civil war feud. I even have an idea for how I'd do it
My favorite rumor right now is
Butcher
Blade
Bunny and
Marty Scrull
The New Villain Enterprises.
I suspect the reason Becky is involved in a tag feud is to build a feud with Asuka.
Asuka beat Becky clean at the peak of Becky's popularity, so she's arguably the biggest and only real threat left to Becky on the main roster at the moment.
Until Nia returns or Bayzler moves up to the main roster, Asuka is the only mountain left for Becky to climb.
Gargano and Ciampa are part of the problem, too. It's a bit past time for the Riddle/Lee/Dream/Dunne/Dain/Priest/DD group to start getting the lion's share of the focus. I'm not saying UE or Gargano/Ciampa need to go or anything, but the time of the titles revolving around them has passed. Maybe not for Fish and O'Reilly admittedly since there's a severe lack of face teams with both the Raiders and the Street Profits getting called up this year.
For those curious, here's my idea for this.
Basically the idea is that once Cole loses the title, Roderick Strong tries to pull a coup on Cole. But only one half of the Tag Team Champs backs strong, and the other half backs Cole.
This leads to a tag team match to determine which of the two sides becomes the Tag Team Champs, with the losers kicked out of UE.
Obviously Becky and Bayley being the current womans champions aren't favorites for the Rumble since they are champions.
But I don't think you can ever NOT consider Charlotte and Sasha favorites. Yeah, both are currently in feuds but the Rumble is still almost 2 months away. Not that I'm saying either of them will win it (neither needs it quite frankly), but because it gurantees a championship match at Wrestlemania they both should always be in the conversation.
Again though, my money is on Bayzler winning the Rumble and going on to challenge Becky. That seems to be the biggest money match if Ronda doesn't somehow return to the picture. If she does return, then she automatically becomes the favorite to win the Rumble and challenge Becky.
The only woman in the division more important than Charlotte is Becky. And that's with or without a title. Her and Becky almost certainly will be competing at Wrestlemania (and not just the pre-show) regardless of who holds the belt and who wins the Rumble because they are on a whole other level from every other woman in the company.
Sasha is a more arguable point... though I'd still say she's ahead of 95% of the woman in the company.
So if ROH closed shop, where would like to their talent go.
I say AEW for mostly everyone except PCO, who I think would fit perfectly in the NWA.
Even though idea of Usos vs the Briscoes would keep me up at night
Corey Graves on his podcast made the observation that Charlotte has been phoning in her recent matches. She hasn't been made to feel important lately and isn't feeling her current storyline and it's showing in her work. Charlotte agreed with it on twitter
https://twitter.com/MsCharlotteWWE/s...33061655261184
Going through the motions isn't something she should be admitting to.
I think Charlotte was (in-character) agreeing with the part where she always needs to be in the championship scene. On one hand, she wasn't in the Survivor Series title match and look what happened. On the other, I'm hoping this Kabuki Warriors run is showing that they don't need to throw Charlotte (or necessarily Sasha) in every important match to help keep it together.
Just realized that (in theory) Shayna can't win the Rumble if she's NXT Champion. (Which is another reason she should have to drop it in two weeks)