4 WWE Women’s Wrestling Takeaways: SmackDown Ruins Christmas
By JB Alexander
Credit: WWE.com
It was Holiday week for WWE which meant everything was pretaped so all the Superstars could have time off to be with their families. Apparently, this was an excuse to run some of the most lackluster content Raw and SmackDown has seen all year long.
WWE has long operated under the idea that no one will be watching their product during the week of Christmas, so they don’t seem to want to waste their good material when there are no eyes on it. Personally, I believe if Raw and SmackDown are must-see television then people will be encouraged to make WWE part of their Holiday tradition, but that’s neither here nor there.
The fact of the matter is that WWE really served up a glass of spoiled eggnog with their flagship shows this week while NXT and NXT UK had to pick the slack. Let’s gather around the tree and unwrap the crappy gifts WWE gave us this year.
Credit: WWE.com
Is This The Divas Division?
There’s something I need to get off my chest.
To WWE: my time is always very precious to me, but during the Holidays this is truer than just about any other time of the year. Why, then, when I sat down with Hulu to spend an hour and a half of my Christmas week with your product, was I treated to an entire episode of SmackDown Live with zero women’s matches?
I’m a pro wrestling fan, sure. But more specifically, I’m a women’s wrestling superfan. I understand this was a Christmas Day special edition of SmackDown and WWE tends to phone it in to some degree on big holiday episodes, but this was literally the most terrible episode of wrestling I’ve watched in some time for the simple fact that, among all the matches on the show, there wasn’t a single one that made me feel like I’m cared about as a viewer.
On this night of television, I didn’t even feel like WWE was at all a step removed from the overt sexism the company oozed for so many years when the female Superstars were known as “Divas.” Carmella was a singing, helpless elf. Naomi and Mandy Rose were fighting over Jimmy Uso under a mistletoe. Lana and Zelina Vega were cheering their men on from ringside. I’m not even kidding when I say I was so completely put off I began wondering what progress WWE has really made.
I get it, it’s Christmas. So why do the men of SmackDown get to celebrate with in-ring competition and the women are relegated to this garbage? Get with it, WWE. The three best words to describe your complete waste of my Holiday time and the skills of these women are: stink, stank, stunk.