Over the years, the WWE/F has had a complex relationship with women performers. From a topless 70 plus year old Mae Young, to Trish Stratus kissing Vinny K’s bare ass, to more bra and panties matches than should’ve ever taken place outside a strip club, let’s just say it’s been an uphill battle for women trying to gain respect in the WWE. Hell it’s only recently that they actually started referring to them as “women” instead of “divas” and treating then like actual wrestlers instead of eye candy. Obviously not Vinny K’s idea, he seems to have gone to the Dan Snyder and Donald Sterling school of political correctness. Now I may be one of the least politically correct people you’ll ever meet, but the concept of treating people equally regardless of gender or race isn’t some new wacky p.c. thing, it’s just basic human decency, and it is fucking laughable that it took WWE so long to figure that out.
Now I am not going to say that I don’t understand where the WWE was coming from during the “dark years” of women in pro wrestling, because I get it. You have a product that is primarily consumed by men, so you use sex to sell that product. That’s just basic marketing right there. Now I may be alone on this, but I just don’t feel like professional wrestling and sex go together at all. Hear me out, I’m as big a fan of hot, nearly naked girls as the next guy. But pro wrestling takes two nearly naked men and puts them in physical contact with each other, which, as a straight man, is probably the least sexual thing there is. My point is, it’s the wrong kind of fantasy. The fantasy of pro wrestling is human superheroes and villains. Larger than life personas battling it out in gladiator style combat. It’s an adult version of the child superhero fantasy, sort of like comic books. You can put sex in comic books too but it’s kind of pointless, because it appeals to the wrong fantasy. Star Wars is incredibly popular with men, and you don’t see any half naked girls there. Keep the girls in bikinis with beer and fast cars where they belong, and let’s keep wrestling innocent. So…
Slowly but surely, the WWE is coming around, and sure, we can scold them for being decades too late, or we can praise them for finally doing the right thing, that’s up to you. For me, the timing is excellent. I have a 10 year old daughter, and she watches wrestling with me, and I’m comfortable with that. A decade ago, I don’t think I would have been. Wrestling used to send out the message to little boys that when you grow up, you can be a superhero too, and to girls the message that when you grow up, you can have a pair of tits and a nice ass. Not exactly the message I’d like to pass on to my daughter. Now sure, the women are still underdressed, but so are the men, so it balances out. But now the message they’re sending little girls is that you can be a superhero too. Granted, you have to have a lot of fake hair for some reason, but it’s better than fake tits. Now here’s where I’d like to point out that pre-attitude era, the WWF at that time did try to develop some sort of legitimate women’s wrestling division with stars like Rockin’ Robin and Wendy Richter, but the problem at that time was there was no competition for them, and they were forced to face women who were nowhere near their skill level and essentially risk injury every time they stepped into the ring with one of them. Now the WWE has more legitimate female talent that ever before, and they’re being treated like real superstars, so all is good in the women’s division, right? No, of course it’s not. If it were, would I be writing this article?
The WWE currently has five exceptionally talented female wrestlers: Bailey, Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks, Becky Lynch, and Asuka. Any one of these five can put on an incredible match with any other one of these five, I know, I’ve seen them do it. Naomi’s close, but not quite at that level yet. Then there are others like Natalya, Alexa Bliss, Mickie James, and Emma, who are solid in-ring performers but clearly not in the upper echelon. The rest of the brand name and NXT women are weak in-ring performers struggling to get over before they get the boot. Then there’s Nia Jax, quite possibly the worst wrestler of any gender that I’ve seen in a major promotion, excluding old man wrestlers being drug out of mothballs for one last go round (i.e. Goldberg). She is the queen of the squash match, because she’s big and strong, and that’s about it. When she has to be in a real wrestling match, one where she takes bumps and gets hit and falls down, it’s god awful, because she is terrible at all of those things. And that voice is so nasally she could take with her mouth closed and it would probably sound exactly the same. But I digress. So it looks like Nia is on track to be Bailey’s next feud, which is quite unfortunate. If you’ve seen Nia Jax wrestle on NXT and recently in the WWE, then you’ve seen her lose feuds with Bailey, Asuka, Sasha Banks, and Charlotte, and you know that there is nothing any of them can do to put on a good match with her. She has literally faced all the best names in the women’s division today, and has made them all look bad with her terrible in-ring work. The last thing WWE needs right now is for their most over women’s wrestler to look bad in victory because someone likes the fact that Nia Jax is big. And just so you don’t think I’m sexist for talking so much shit about a female wrestler, you can take most of what I said about Nia Jax and apply it to Bobby Lashley. Anyway, moving on…
While Nia Jax is literally a big problem for the WWE women’s division, she is not its worst problem. Those ten other wrestlers I mentioned earlier, that is enough to have a good strong women’s division with diversity of feuds, battle for championship positioning, everything you could want out of a pro wrestling division. Unfortunately, they are divided into three divisions: Raw, Smackdown, and NXT. On a recent episode of Smackdown, Shane O-Mac asked the entire Smackdown women’s division to come down to the ring. There were five of them. So basically you have six women for each title on Raw and Smackdown, and Asuka all by herself on NXT. Ok fine, there are other women wrestling on NXT, just none that are any good. The biggest and probably the only threat to Asuka right now are Billie Kay and Peyton Royce, who somehow managed to win some kind of up-and-comers award, which makes no sense, since they both have well below average in-ring and mic skills, and the only thing that makes them remotely interesting is the fact that there are two of them. Nikki Cross made her NXT debut with Eric Young’s Sanity faction and looked promising, but it turns out she’s terrible in the ring. Then there’s Ember Moon, who is the only other remotely decent wrestler on NXT and will probably take up the mantle of carrying the women’s division when Asuka finally gets called up to Raw or Smackdown. And I guarantee you she will be needed soon. You can have the same six wrestlers going at it over and over again without it getting boring. The Charlotte for Alexa swap should help for now, but the women’s feuds are already starting to get old, and what will happen when fans get tired of watching Bailey take on Sasha Banks for the 200th time?
The answer is simple: women’s division on Raw, cruiserweights on Smackdown. It makes perfect sense, which is why the WWE would never go for it. They’ll be more time for women’s matches on Raw since it’s a longer show and they won’t have the cruiserweight matches anymore, and on Smackdown, they can replace their couple of women’s matches with a couple of cruiserweight matches and leave the rest for 205 Live, which already follows Smackdown anyway. Of course, more talented female wrestlers would solve the problem too, except there are not a lot out there. So WWE needs to get to work and get the Performance Center and NXT to start cranking out legitimate talent so figure out some other way to solve the problem with stale feuds before the women’s division goes from being the strongest it’s ever been, back to an afterthought. Don’t rest on your laurels, WWE, you’re doing better, but you’re not there yet, and if you want the women’s division to stay top level, then it’s time to be proactive instead of reactive.
Pro Wrestling Scribe 