A Look Back at WWE's Faulty Booking of Their Women's Division at WrestleMania 29

I remember the build to WrestleMania 29 like it was yesterday, but it was actually 10 years ago. Hard to believe that a decade prior, WWE had so many potential ideas for women's matches, and I mean, so many. Yet they went from a lot of options, to one announced match, to literally nothing. Granted, there are still a lot of mistakes that WWE had made regarding the women, but at least they have still come quite a few ways since this debacle 10 years ago. Enough talk. Let's get to what was planned (rumored or otherwise).

First up, the potential championship matches.

Eve Torres vs AJ Lee

Now, this was never really confirmed, but I (and many others) figured that we would see Eve Torres and AJ Lee in a potential clash between the two most over women in 2012. During that year, AJ Lee was gaining pops for her on-screen relationships, first with Daniel Bryan, then with CM Punk (who later became AJ's real-life husband), later with Kane, and then...John Cena. As for Eve, it was in February of that year that Eve turned heel for the first time in her WWE career, and she had been getting over in her role as a scheming villainess, which led to her third Divas Championship at Night of Champions.

The latest seed for the eventual match came at TLC in December of that year, as Eve was shown to be stunned over AJ winning the Slammy for Diva of the Year. WrestleMania was in AJ's home state of New Jersey, so it seemed like we would get that title contest at that grand stage. However, it was in December of that year that Eve informed the higher-ups that she would be leaving WWE, so that plan was kiboshed.

Kaitlyn vs Layla

Eve's incoming departure led to her once done rivalry with Kaitlyn being resurrected, with Kaitlyn capturing the Divas Championship on January 14, 2013. This led to a new game plan for the potential title match at WrestleMania. Kaitlyn needed a viable challenger for the title at the grand stage, and WWE (at that time) decided that Kaitlyn's challenger should be none other than Layla, who had been aligned with Kaitlyn against the antice of Eve for several months. Now that Eve's out of WWE, a new villainess was needed to plague Kaitlyn, and again, WWE decided that the villainess would be Layla.

For a few weeks in February and March, we would see Layla obsessively fawn over the Divas Championship, as she once held that title 2013. It started out as just a dream of what could be, but in March, it led to Layla actually costing Kaitlyn a match just to make herself look better in her eyes. The news reports pretty much made it official; Layla was set to turn heel against Kaitlyn and go after her title, and I was really looking for it to happen, but they kiboshed that for reasons that I, even 10 years later, still can't fathom.

Kaitlyn vs AJ

So we were not getting evil Layla against Kaitlyn, so they tried the already evil AJ Lee against Kaitlyn instead. That's right; after Eve left WWE, WWE turned AJ heel at TLC, and we actually saw a brief interaction between the two in late March. All we saw from that was AJ attack Kaitlyn by sending her headfirst into a water fountain, but nothing after that. Even so, Kaitlyn vs AJ was supposed to happen, but they kiboshed that as well. I didn't mind that being pulled; they didn't really build on that. We would get a Kaitlyn/AJ feud later in the year, with a much better build.

So after all of that, WWE decided on not having a title match at all at WrestleMania. However, there were other ideas.

Tag Team Bouts (including Returning Talent)

I remember reading that WWE had plans for a multi-woman tag team contest at WrestleMania 29, which (IMO) is lazy booking for women. They did this at three straight WMs following that "Miss WrestleMania" Battle Royal debacle, and again, it's an easy way to book women, but I often take it because, well, it's better than nothing. There were different ideas for these matches, but they all involved returning alums, including Kelly Kelly, Maria Kanellis, Maryse, and the Bella Twins.

One match had all of the returning alums as heels against a quintet including Kaitlyn, Layla, and three others (I assume it would have been Aksana, Naomi, and Cameron). Another match would have been a chapter in the planned Kaitlyn/Layla feud, with Kaitlyn leading a team a babyfaces, while the evil Layla captained a team of heels. It wasn't exactly concrete, but I did read something like that, but there was a lot of controversy behind that story. You will see as I continue.

The Announced (and later Canceled) Match

So it was in mid-March that the Bellas returned after 11 months out of WWE, but there was a lot of controversy and accusations that they had basically prevented the aforementioned alums from returning. Within moments, the twins were engaged in a feud with Naomi and Cameron, and WWE decided to interject Tons of Funk (Brodus Clay and Tensai) and Rhodes Scholars (Cody Rhodes) into this and decided to make it an eight-person mega-tag match. So after all of that, the only way the women got a match was if men were involved. As Hailey Baldwin most likely said when she tied the knot with Justin Bieber, "Ugh, I have to settle for this."

So in the remaining weeks leading to WrestleMania, that was the match. It was part of the WM29 promo package on every Raw, it was part of the package on every SmackDown, and was even mentioned on the night of WM: April 7, 2013. Then a funny thing happened. The match suddenly wasn't on. Apparently, the mixed tag was cut for time. Of course, I had to do my best impression of that "blinking guy" GIF when I heard that. Cut for time. On a FOUR-HOUR PROGRAM?! As a tennis icon often says, "You cannot be serious!" The match ended up on post-WM Raw the next night. Oh boy.

It's been ten years since that booking debacle, and (for better or worse) women's matches at WrestleMania have been better booked. We are seeing actual championship matches, we've seen battle royals with actual meaning, and even the multi-women tag matches have been booked better and have actual storylines involved. Could it still be better? I believe so. But at least it's a hell of an improvement compared to 10 years ago.