The Monday night ghost town
If you tuned into Monday Night Raw on July 20, you might have felt like you were watching a show from 1995. The ring was packed, the pyro was loud, and the storylines were moving at a breakneck pace, but there was a gaping, neon-lit hole where the women’s division should have been. For two hours and change, I sat there waiting for a match that never arrived.
Triple H has been praised for his slow-burn booking, but this felt less like a burn and more like a total blackout. While the men were busy trading clotheslines and building toward the summer premium live events, the women were relegated to brief backstage segments and filler interviews. It is a massive regression for a company that spent the last few years bragging about the revolution.
Missing in action
As Ringside News reported this week, the fans didn’t exactly stay quiet about the oversight. Social media was a dumpster fire of justified frustration by the end of the broadcast. You have a roster packed with talent like Rhea Ripley and Liv Morgan, yet the creative office decided that three straight hours of dudes hitting each other was the only way to move the needle.
Nobody wants to watch the same three tag team matches repeated into infinity. You have to give the audience a reason to care about every single belt on that roster, not just the ones held by the heavyweights. When you ignore half your roster, you aren't just missing a match; you are actively training the crowd to check their phones whenever the women walk out on camera.
The booking blind spot
This isn't a one-off error in judgment. It is a pattern that suggests the creative team is stretched way too thin. When you spend 20 minutes on a promo segment for two guys who have already fought five times, you effectively kill the oxygen in the room for everyone else.
Triple H loves his deep, interconnected character work, but he clearly lacks a plan for the mid-card women's roster. We are looking at a total of 0 meaningful matches for the division on a primetime show. That is a failure of logic, plain and simple, especially when you consider how hard these performers work to stay relevant in a crowded, noisy environment.
If the plan is to save the big matches for the monthly specials, that is just weak sauce. You cannot expect the audience to stay invested if the weekly build is nonexistent. The wrestling business thrives on forward momentum, and right now, the women's locker room has been slammed into an emergency brake for no clear reason.
Fixing the red brand funk
Maybe the creative team needs an intervention. I’d suggest shifting the focus away from the repetitive brawls that end in no-contests and actually booking a coherent feud for the women's mid-card. Give them 12 minutes for a clean finish and see what happens.
It is not rocket science. It is show business. If you aren't showcasing the depth of your talent pool, you are leaving money on the table and annoying the most loyal fans in the industry. Let's hope the next episode isn't another ghost town, because the patience of the paying, shouting, screaming audience is wearing thinner than a chair shot from 1999.
