Sasha Banks

Pro Wrestling Illustrated announced Thursday that SmackDown Women's champion Bayley earned the No. 1 spot on this year's PWI Women's 100 list:

It marks the first time Bayley has ranked No. 1 in the world since PWI began ranking women's wrestlers in 2008. Her best finish previously was fifth in 2016 and 2017.

Bayley is followed by a quartet of fellow WWE Superstars to round out the list, with Becky Lynch at No. 2, Asuka at No. 3, Charlotte Flair at No. 4 and Sasha Banks at No. 5.

Following the announcement, Bayley commented on the honor:

The evaluation window for the PWI Women's 100 ran from Oct. 1, 2019, through Sept. 30, 2020, making it difficult to deny that Bayley was deserving of the top position.

PWI bases its rankings off several factors, including win-loss record, in-ring ability and accomplishments, such as title wins.

Shortly after the evaluation window began, Bayley dropped the SmackDown Women's title to Charlotte. She then turned heel and won it back days later. Since beating Flair for the title on Oct. 11, 2019, Bayley has held it for more than one year.

Bayley and Banks have been the primary focus of the WWE women's division for the past several months, especially since Money in the Bank in May, as Lynch announced the next night that she was pregnant and relinquished the Raw Women's Championship.

That ended a 373-day reign. Although Lynch was absent for about four months of the evaluation period, she did enough during that time to earn the No. 2 spot in the PWI Women's 100, including wins over Shayna Baszler at WrestleMania and Asuka at Royal Rumble.

Asuka was crowned Raw Women's champion after Lynch vacated the title, as she won the women's Money in the Bank ladder match.

The Empress of Tomorrow accomplished a ton during the evaluation window, including winning both the Raw Women's title and Money in the Bank, as well as the WWE Women's Tag Team Championships with Kairi Sane.

Asuka and Sane beat Lynch and Flair in a TLC match at the TLC pay-per-view in December to retain the tag titles, and after dropping the Raw Women's title to Banks in July, she won it back at SummerSlam.

Like Lynch, Flair missed some time during the evaluation period, as she has been out injured since June. Even so, she earned her spot by being a consistent presence on Raw, SmackDown and NXT for months.

Flair held the SmackDown Women's title briefly at the start of the evaluation period and beat Rhea Ripley at WrestleMania to become the NXT Women's champion for the second time, although she dropped it to Io Shirai about two months later.

It can be argued that Banks deserved a higher ranking than fifth since she and Bayley worked in lockstep throughout the evaluation window and held the WWE Women's Tag Team Championships together. Bayley has since turned on Banks.

Sasha's Raw Women's title reign lasting only one month likely played a role in her ranking, although it can be argued that there was no better women's wrestler in the world from an in-ring perspective, as she put on memorable and entertaining matches against the likes of Lynch, Asuka and Shirai, among others.

Pro Wrestling Illustrated began ranking the top men's wrestlers in the world with the first PWI 500 in 1991, and it created the PWI Female 50 in 2008 before expanding it to the PWI Women's 100 in 2018.

In the 13 years that PWI has been ranking the top women's wrestlers, 13 different women have now earned the No. 1 spot.  

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Friday night's WWE draft episode of SmackDown on Fox saw its viewership fall compared to last week's show.

According to Showbuzz Daily, SmackDown averaged 2.086 million viewers during its two-hour broadcast, which was down from last week's 2.155 million. SmackDown also did a 0.6 rating in the 18-49-year-old demographic, which was No. 3 on the night.

The main focus of Friday's show was the WWE draft, with Stephanie McMahon announcing every pick for both SmackDown and Raw.

As expected, several top stars remained on their respective brands, as WWE champion Drew McIntyre and Raw Women's champion Asuka stayed on Raw, while Universal champion Roman Reigns and Sasha Banks remained on SmackDown.

There were also several significant changes, however, including Seth Rollins going from Raw to SmackDown and AJ Styles going from SmackDown to Raw.

The biggest surprise of the night involved New Day. Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods returned after missing months because of injury and immediately challenged for the SmackDown Tag Team Championships, beating Cesaro and Shinsuke Nakamura for the titles.

After the big win, it was announced that Kingston and Woods had been drafted to Raw, while Big E—who won a Falls Count Anywhere match against Sheamus earlier in the night—would remain on SmackDown, meaning New Day is no longer a three-man group.

SmackDown also featured a SmackDown Women's Championship match between Bayley and Banks. Not surprisingly, there wasn't a clean finish, as Bayley purposely got herself disqualified by hitting Sasha with a steel chair.

That led to Banks challenging Bayley to a SmackDown Women's Championship match at the Hell in a Cell pay-per-view inside the Hell in a Cell structure.

Another big moment on SmackDown saw Lars Sullivan return after being on the shelf for several months because of injury. Sullivan destroyed the likes of Matt Riddle, Jeff Hardy, The Miz and John Morrison following a tag team match.

The main event of SmackDown featured "The Fiend" Bray Wyatt facing Kevin Owens. The Fiend won the match and posed with Alexa Bliss atop the stage to close the show.

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Sasha Banks beat former friend Bayley by disqualification on Friday night's WWE draft episode of SmackDown, resulting in Bayley retaining the SmackDown Women's Championship.

Bayley intentionally got herself disqualified to retain the title after illegally using a steel chair. After the match, Banks turned the tide on Bayley and attacked her with multiple chair shots before the champ escaped the ring.

After months of the pair running the WWE women's division on both SmackDown and Raw, things started to deteriorate when Banks dropped the Raw women's title to Asuka at SummerSlam after Bayley failed to return the favor by helping her friend as The Legit Boss had done for her earlier in the night.

Bayley and Banks then dropped the WWE Women's Tag Team Championships to Shayna Baszler and Nia Jax one week later at Payback, meaning the only title remaining between them was The Role Model's SmackDown women's title.

They fell short in their bid to recapture the tag team titles, and The Boss was in a great deal of pain following the match after Baszler worked on her leg throughout.

It initially looked as though Bayley was tending to her friend, but she instead launched a vicious attack. She further injured The Boss' leg and put an exclamation point on the segment by placing her teammate's head inside a steel chair and stomping on it.

The next week on SmackDown, Bayley explained her actions by insisting she had been using Banks the whole time and decided to toss her aside when she was no longer of use to her.

After a couple of weeks off television, The Boss returned on SmackDown to address the situation. Banks, who was wearing a neck brace, was attacked from behind by Bayley and nearly suffered the same fate until backstage personnel stepped in.

Banks finally got some measure of revenge at Clash of Champions after Bayley lost to Asuka by disqualification, when she attacked The Role Model with a chair and sent her running.

On the Oct. 2 edition of SmackDown, Banks vowed to gain even more retribution against Bayley and to take her prized championship.

The Boss ripped the brace off of her neck and announced she and Bayley would face each other for the SmackDown women's title on the WWE draft edition of the blue brand.

Despite Banks' declaration, it came as little surprise that Bayley escaped with her title reign intact since they are likely to clash again at Hell in a Cell on Oct. 25 and potentially many more times beyond that.

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