Just the other day, former Divas Champion Paige caused quite a stir with some comments she had made regarding the women’s division and why they had a lackadaisical product for so long. If you missed it, here is a snippet of what she said in an interview with Gulf News.
“It was never WWE holding the women back. It was the fans not taking them seriously. They wanted to see more of the male characters many years ago. It was a male-dominated sport.”
“When I first started, there were only five women there. It was a struggle but WWE just believed in us. When I got into the ring, I wanted to prove to the fans that girls were capable of having good matches and sometimes, even better. That was kind of my mission from the get go. Now there’s obviously a revolution.”
Now, it is worth noting that she is not entirely untruthful in her claims. There was an extended period of time where fans did not care and they were dubbed “the bathroom break”. That part is true. Where she is wrong is determining the culprit for the nonchalant attitude given to them by the fans. She is essentially saying that we are the reason why the women were irrelevant and perceived to be inferior to men in every single way.
To understand why she is wrong, we have to understand the genesis of this issue. Ever since professional wrestling became mainstream, especially for the majority of the 21st century, women were not viewed as athletic performers, so much as they were viewed as eye candy and to give the WWE product a certain sex appeal. That is not on the fans.
If we want to go into specific examples, I would certainly like to ask Paige how the fans can be blamed for the owner of the company forcing Trish Stratus to strip into near nakedness on live television while telling her to bark like a dog. We weren’t focusing on whether or not she can perform in the ring, which she clearly can. It was done for the sake of entertainment, and because that is what is popular. That was the way things were for a long time before WWE embraced the PG era.
The most important factor in determining the value, or lack thereof, of the women’s division, is not the fans. It is the people in charge of the product. It is the people in charge of creating the script and delegating a certain amount of time to each segment on the show. If you want the fans to care, you have to give the reasons to care. Did it ever occur to Paige that perhaps we didn’t care about the Divas for a long time because WWE only bothered to give matches such as her teaming up with Emma against the Bella Twins only 30 seconds for a tag team match on a 3 hour show? Is that our fault as well?
@StephMcMahon Your female wrestlers have record selling merchandise & have starred in the highest rated segment of the show several times,
— AJ (@TheAJMendez) February 25, 2015
@StephMcMahon And yet they receive a fraction of the wages & screen time of the majority of the male roster. #UseYourVoice
— AJ (@TheAJMendez) February 25, 2015
Remember when AJ Lee sent that tweet out? That is when a changing of the guard took place, and Divas started to get matches that needed commercial breaks. WWE’s higher-ups were forced to respond because one of their own employees had to call them out on unfair treatment. Now, Paige essentially said that the treatment of women and how they are perceived is a two-way street. WWE can only do so much, but if we don’t care about them, then they will suffer.
Here is how I see it. We should only give the amount of enthusiasm and effort as WWE puts into creating interesting storylines and making us care about individual characters. The most blatant lie told here was that WWE never held back the women. Maybe she said this because she knew she’d get heat on her backstage if she called out WWE on this truth, but assuming she was genuine in her claims, it can be debunked if you do a little research.
There have been many examples revealed after the fact that showed WWE not investing in the women enough. Remember the Mixed Tag Team Match between The Funkadactyls and Tons of Funk against Team Rhodes Scholars and The Bella Twins that was cut from WrestleMania 29 because The Undertaker and CM Punk went over time? Now, Taker and Punk was quite clearly the best match of the night and the only thing worth watching, but if you advertise a match, it has to be wrenching to be told hours before showtime your match is being canned. The women showed real emotion for not being able to walk down the WrestleMania aisle.
When Nikki Bella won her first Divas title from AJ Lee at Survivor Series 2014, the match was originally supposed to go around 15 minutes. Instead, it got 30 seconds. We have stories of Michelle McCool and Victoria needing to re-do a match because their punches looked too real, Melina getting yelled at backstage because her performances were better than the men, Gail Kim needing approval to get moves like superplexes approved, Molly Holly suggesting her head get shaved in order to give the Women’s Championship a spot on the WrestleMania 20 card, and of course WWE holding a Women’s battle royal at WrestleMania 25, only to have the victory awarded to Santino Marella in a wig and makeup. And that may be just the tip of the iceberg, as there may be other stories untold for the sake of being seen in a negative light.
Here is the biggest question we all need to ask. Do you think it’s purely coincidence that the women got their own Elimination Chamber match, Hell In A Cell match, Money In The Bank Ladder match, Royal Rumble match, women-exclusive PPV’s, tag titles and rumored WrestleMania main event slot AFTER WWE was called out on their perceived biased treatment? Of course it’s not. Vince and creative are the ones that pull the strings. Of course, there are superstars that just cannot work a good match, but WWE is laden with talent, and the talent in the women’s division was overlooked for a long time.
WWE finally cares about actually giving women opportunities to prove themselves, and that is why they have a more prominent position. If they care, we care. We can only respond to what is given to us. Can we be blamed for not caring about a division where the matches actually lasted shorter than a real bathroom break?
What is your take?
