WRESTLING’S WOMEN ARE FLYING HIGH
‘Divas’ no more, they’ve taken center stage in the squared circle
As Sasha Banks rolled up to AT&T Stadium in Texas in the days before WrestleMania last year, she was amazed to see images of herself, Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch in the center of a massive banner with men’s wrestlers on either side of them.
“I never in my whole life thought that I’d see the women right in the middle representing WWE,” said Banks, who got out of the vehicle to take a photo.
Raising the banner meant raising the bar.
“To think that the company had that much faith to highlight us along with the men on the stadium, it was surreal,” Flair recalled. “And it makes you want to work that much harder.”
WrestleMania 32, which took place April 3, 2016, was the last time the company used the term “Divas” to describe its female talent, instead opting to use “Superstars,” the word it uses to describe its male performers. The championship belt with the pinkish butterfly was replaced.
From a change in philosophy in recruiting and develop-
ing women to the trending hashtag #GiveDivasAChance from angry fans in reaction to a 30-second women’s match in February 2015, to movements termed the “Divas Revolution” and the “Women’s Evolution,” to elite-level performers now among the most popular athletes within WWE’s three brands, women’s wrestling has undergone a metamorphosis. Another potential inflection point is ahead Sunday at WrestleMania 33 in Orlando.
Bayley defends her Raw women’s title against Flair, Banks and Nia Jax; all four were trained under WWE’s third brand, NXT, at the Performance Center in Orlando. Alexa Bliss defends her
Smackdown women’s title against Lynch, Carmella, Mickie James, Natalya and likely other surprise participants. Bliss, Lynch and Carmella came up through NXT. In a mixed-gender tag team match, Nikki Bella teams with boyfriend John Cena against Maryse and husband The Miz.
“I always think there’s more work to be done,” Flair said. “But if you look at 2016 as a whole, Sasha and I having the first-ever women’s Hell in a Cell match, we main-evented a pay-per-view, we stole the show at WrestleMania at AT&T Stadium. There’s always a women’s match on the show; sometimes on Raw and Smackdown, there are two matches. I think they are giving us more and more opportunity every week.”
Merchandise sales depicting its female performers continue to grow, the company says. Walk through an arena at any WWE event, and you see as many men wearing T-shirts in support of Bayley, Flair, Banks, Nikki Bella and others as you do women wearing them.
WWE’s TV audience continues to increase in the percentage of females, nearing 38%, according to Nielsen figures. Those numbers include reality shows Total
Divas and Total Bellas on E! that have added an entry point to the female performers for new fans.
As a TV product — revenue from TV and the WWE Network was more than $420million in 2016 — WWE appears to have convinced a male-dominated viewing audience to accept female athletes.
“We gave the women a platform, and, once the world saw that, they realized that is what they wanted,” said Paul “Triple H” Levesque, WWE’s executive vice president of talent, live events and creative. “Women’s wrestling has earned the platform that it has. There are times when the men’s match can’t follow the women’s match. There are times when the women’s match is — and it should be — the main event. And we’re not stopping here. It’s just getting started.”
CHANGING THE GAME
Beth Phoenix, who will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame on Friday, wanted to be a wrestler since watching WrestleMania X as a 13-year-old. She was on her high school’s wrestling team. She had a giant poster of “Stone Cold” Steve Austin on her dorm room door in college. She trained and worked on the independents before getting a developmental contract with WWE.
During a six-year run on the WWE main roster before retiring in 2012, she was a three-time women’s champion and won the Divas title. She did so with a dominating physical style that was rare in her era. Many of her opponents had been models or dancers who had not previously had aspirations to be wrestlers and were culled from the company’s Diva Search contests.
It was an era of brazen sexuality by the women’s performers in bikini contests, bra and panties matches, pillow fight matches and even a gravy bowl match.
“There were times where that wasn’t the trend to have wrestling matches,” Phoenix said. “There’s nothing wrong with that, but it wasn’t the style, it wasn’t the brand, it wasn’t the flavor of the month. This movement happening now is girls getting opportunities that they have had occasionally in the past but not consistently . ... Now there is a consistent drive to market the girls as equal as men, and I think it’s awesome.”
The key moment of change came when Levesque took over the company’s developmental efforts and altered the parameters of what the company was looking for when it hired women — in both experience and physical appearance.
Levesque wanted to change the perception of women’s wrestling, presenting the women as athletes and helping WWE ride a wave of interest in women’s sports, fueled by Serena Williams, the U.S. women’s soccer team, Ronda Rousey and others.
“I think WWE is more open to seeing who is out there that they can groom as opposed to just relegating themselves to, for example, one blonde, one brunette, one Spanish talent, etc. It’s made the entire female roster more varied,” said Mike Johnson, who covers the industry for PWInsider.com.
THE BAYLEY FACTOR
Perhaps the most popular performer — male or female — in WWE right now is Bayley, who heads to WrestleMania as the
Raw women’s champion. Her connection to the fans runs deep, given that she was a longtime fan herself who dreamed of being in WWE as a kid growing up in the Bay Area. Her wardrobe with bright colors and tassels hanging from her sleeves is inspired by WWE Hall of Famer Randy “Macho Man” Savage. “I still feel I’m such a fan, and I literally, every time I come out, I can’t believe that I’m here and I really do this,” she said. “I want to give back, and I also feel like such a fan.”
Levesque said he was hoping to announce a women’s tournament for possibly the summer.
The biggest step, though, seems ahead, and not nearly as far away as it was even a few years ago.
“To main-event WrestleMania,” Flair said, “that would be my goal.”