It’s The Women Who Matter in Evolution, Not WWE
By Harmony Cox
Some people think WWE’s Evolution Pay Per View is a shallow cash-grab. Some people think it’s an opportunity for the women’s division to grab the spotlight. What if it’s both?
In the least surprising news of all time, fan reaction to Evolution has been mixed.
Immediately after Evolution was announced, haters mobbed the Twitter announcement and Reddit with eye-rolling complaints.
Common complaints included declaring that nobody would watch a women’s PPV (even though the Mae Young Classic already disproved that last year), that TNA had beaten WWE to the punch years ago (even though All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling beat every American promotion on this front by over a decade, so let’s get off that high horse IMPACT fans), and that it was somehow reverse discrimination for women to have a pay-per-view to themselves.
The most baffling responses have included a demand for an all-men’s pay-per-view for equality’s sake. Good news, everybody- the Greatest Royal Rumble happened a mere three months ago. You brave souls can rest easy. Men are still getting opportunities in the WWE.
People hating on women’s progress in the WWE is not a new phenomenon. The more interesting aspect of this has been how fans of women’s wrestling have responded to Evolution. There has been a lot of excitement, but also a lot of trepidation. Fans of women’s wrestling are praising the event, but also raising concerns about how the event will unfold. And those concerns are valid.
After all, WWE’s historical record in dealing with female talent has not been good. Things are currently better for women than they ever have been in WWE, but even now there’s a lack of screen time and a series of recent booking decisions that have fans rightfully worried about how WWE views its female superstars. And of course, there’s the issues that WWE has always had with female superstars since time immemorial around representation and equal pay.
All of this adds up to a lot of conflict in how fans of women’s wrestling are reacting to Evolution. Is getting excited about this event just letting WWE continue to wallpaper over its history of treating women badly? Can we trust a company that has done so many dumb things in the past to do better in the future? Should fans of women’s wrestling care about Evolution at all?
The answer is yes. And no. Like everything else with WWE, it’s complicated.
WWE is not a leader in the field of progressive companies, and their constant attempts to pretend that they give a damn about social equity are just getting embarrassing. Many of WWE’s fans and the talents they employ are ready for the future.
Sadly, the people they work for spend their time chasing nostalgia pops to the detriment of younger talent, promoting awful writing with incredibly limited roles for women, writing wincingly unfunny bigotry that would only be funny to a seventy-year old megalomaniac, and continuing to embrace a very limited idea of what sells and appeals to fans. No matter what kind of lip service WWE pays to the future, it’s obvious that the leadership of the company is stuck in the past.
And if you are a fan of women’s wrestling, you are painfully aware that for most of the women who paved the way at WWE, that past is nothing to be nostalgic about. There is nothing that WWE can say or do to change the fact that for decades, the largest and most influential wrestling company in the world normalized treating women’s wrestlers like dirt.
WWE doesn’t get to claim that they have ever supported women when they have made millions of dollars by cheerily exploiting women as a cornerstone of their weekly programming. They don’t get to demand a pat on the back for fixing a problem they gleefully cashed in on just twenty years ago.
As much as WWE seems to hope we all don’t remember this stuff, the company’s addiction to nostalgia for its own products makes it impossible to be unaware. The Trish and Lita Collection on the network is a nice breakdown of their rivalry, but it’s also impossible to watch without being taken aback at how blatantly sexist and gross the commentaries and plotlines are.
RAW 25 was a hit parade of stars who helped make their female colleagues lives hell. And that’s to say nothing of the awful treatment stars like Chyna suffered behind the scenes, much of which we only learn about years after the fact.
It would be different if WWE acknowledged their awful past with women, apologized, and could coherently explain how they were trying to improve for the future. Hell, even if they never did that, we could probably be a bit more forgiving if they were currently doing right by their female roster. However, WWE falls short on that level too.
We see it play out every week. One or two women’s matches per hour of programming, many cut short or overlaid by commercials. (Women’s content is often completely cut from the shortened versions of the programs too- sorry Hulu viewers.) When women are featured on the main roster programming, it’s frustratingly inconsistent, and the storylines are often confusing or bad.
This is what gave us Nia Jax getting bodyshamed on her way to her title run. This is what gave us James Ellsworth winning the first-ever women’s Money In The Bank match. This is what gave us Asuka winning the Royal Rumble, only to have Ronda Rousey steal her spotlight. And so on.
Every week it’s one step forward, two steps back for female talent at the WWE. The company wants to look like they’re championing the women who work for them without actually changing in a meaningful way. Lots of big historic “firsts” for women, followed by a historic lack of follow-through.
What Stephanie said at the Evolution announcement about fans leading the way to change is correct, though I’d put it in more cynical terms. WWE’s shiny new support for women’s wrestling is 100% a result of their need to attract and keep new fans. It makes financial sense and it’s good PR for WWE to bet big on women in their next generation of talent. Unfortunately, WWE has engaged with this opportunity in the most shallow way possible, and they don’t deserve to be rewarded for that.
So, enough with the revisionist history WWE tries to sell us every time they do something like this. We are all perfectly aware that Stephanie McMahon did not invent women’s wrestling. Nobody in Creative woke up one day with a sudden burning interest in promoting gender equality in the WWE.
Appealing to women is just the latest survival gambit for WWE, no more morally or socially responsible than the worst ratings-grubbing excesses of their product twenty years ago. They don’t deserve any special kudos for being the last company in the world to realize that 51% of the Earth’s population might enjoy their product if it didn’t actively insult them. I’m over it.
You might be wondering why I watch WWE at all, given my belief that they do a terrible job of working with female talent. The reason is that the idea of the Women’s Revolution might be manufactured, but the great work these women put in every week is real.
As frustrated as I get with WWE as a whole, I can’t deny that they have some of the best women’s wrestlers in the world on their roster. I would argue that Asuka is probably one of the best wrestlers- male or female -working in any company today. Ditto Sasha Banks, Bayley, Ruby Riott, and Ember Moon. WWE has been incredibly savvy about recruiting spectacular female talent and letting them make names for themselves.
They’ve also put more work into allowing female talent to develop in the WWE style. Wrestlers like Lacey Evans, Shayna Baszler, Sonya Deville and yes, Charlotte Flair have all become incredible talents with access to the resources available to them as WWE superstars.
I don’t believe that the leadership at WWE deserves more than a fraction of the credit for their women’s division, but I believe the women themselves deserve all the credit in the world. NXT cracked the door open, but the women in the company kicked it down, and they’ve been kicking it off the hinges ever since.
The Four Horsewomen stealing the show at NXT, main eventing and pioneering match formats, broke the idea of what women’s wrestling could be at WWE wide open. Since then, the NXT women’s division has been the home of women’s wrestling innovation at WWE.
We’ve seen real, breathtaking rivalries. We have seen cage matches and iron man matches that rivaled anything happening on the main roster before or since. We’ve seen them moving merchandise. #GiveDivasAChance gave the women’s division the ball, and the next crop of wrestlers picked it up and ran.
We’ve seen their work- not Stephanie McMahon’s words -ripple through the company and actually create change. That is the actual women’s evolution at WWE. It isn’t a corporate mandate. It’s the women themselves pushing the envelope and making a space for themselves that just didn’t exist before. It doesn’t really matter whether the belts around these women’s waists say Diva or not. What matters is that they are changing what women’s wrestling can be at WWE.
It’s a shame it’s taking the company so long to catch up with them, but as long as these women are bringing eyes and voices to the product, the opportunity for change remains. And I do want WWE to change, because for better or worse, they represent the finish line for most of the wrestlers grinding their way through the indies right now. Just this summer, WWE snapped up Io Shirai, Deonna Purrazzo, Jinny, Nina Samuels and Charlie Morgan.
And working at WWE really does mean something to the women who wrestle there. Wrestlers like Candice LeRae have talked about how WWE represents the dream for them– something they wanted since they grew up watching the wrestlers they loved. I want this company to be worth it for them. I want to keep watching them, and I want them to do work they can be proud of.
WWE could be better. It could, in fact, evolve. But we’re not there yet.
Until WWE figures out how the hell to work with women, we’re going to keep getting this kind of whiplash. We’re going to see Asuka stuck in a baffling, insulting feud with James Ellsworth. We’re also going to see her tear down the house with Charlotte Flair in the best match at WrestleMania. We’re going to see Naomi miss out on the title scene despite the fact she’s one of the most popular wrestlers on the roster. We’ll also see her wow the audience when she grabs the Kofi spot for herself every chance she gets.
We’re going to see Sasha Banks quietly doing the absolute most with the weak plotlines she’s being given, and then we’ll watch her knock every match she has out of the park after she puts herself and her opponents over on social media like WWE can’t be bothered to do.
Right now this company isn’t worth watching, but these women are, and they aren’t missing their shot.
The Evolution pay-per-view is the heart of the contradictory way WWE treats women’s talent. WWE is asking us for a benefit of the doubt that it hasn’t earned and it doesn’t deserve. As a part of that flashy gambit they’re giving their amazing roster of female superstars a massive opportunity. Both of these things are true, and it’s natural to feel conflicted about it.
Whatever your reaction to Evolution is, it’s probably valid. If you grew up watching Trish Stratus and Lita get degraded, it makes sense you’d want to see them get a victory lap. It also makes sense you wouldn’t trust the company that degraded them. There isn’t really a correct take here: you’re as justified in being excited about this as you are in giving it a pass.
I’ll be tuning in, of course. I will be watching my favorite wrestlers, and crossing my fingers they got the matches they wanted. Since it’s WWE, I’m going to expect some really stupid things to happen. I’m going to cringe my way through a bunch of self-important blather about history and destiny or whatever the hell they stick on the teleprompter for a McMahon to say.
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But I expect despite all of that, the women of WWE are going to tear the house down, just like they do every time they’re given the spotlight. They did it at the Royal Rumble. They did it at Money in the Bank. They did it at WrestleMania. They will do it once more at Evolution. And every time they do it, the spotlight gets a little wider, and the actual future of women’s wrestling gets a little more exciting. It’ll be worth it.
I hope.