Disclaimer: This post discusses the progress of gender equality within WWE, a subject that is not not problematic and may require some anti-capitalist context to see the big picture. To get that context for yourself, please read my lengthy “capitalism is bad” preamble.

Introduction

For fans of women getting opportunities in the wrestling industry, and women’s wrestling in general, the last few years in WWE have kind of ruled. 2015 saw the rise of the Four Horsewomen of NXT, including one of the best matches in company history from Sasha Banks and Bayley, and their follow-up rematch in a historic Iron Woman contest. In 2016, the Divas Championship was replaced by the reborn Women’s Championship, which would have to become the Raw Women’s Championship after the latest brand split necessitated the creation of the Smackdown Women’s Championship (for those who don’t recall, the first time there was a brand split, the Women’s title was shared between the two brands). That Raw Women’s Championship was also the focus of an epic series of matches between Banks and Charlotte Flair, including Raw and PPV main events and culminating in the first women’s Hell in a Cell match. 2017 gave us the first women’s Money In The Bank, which was so problematic they did the match again and pretended the first one hadn’t happened, but it also gave us the first Mae Young Classic, which has now concluded its second iteration. Not only has the MYC provided numerous women on the independent scene a chance to shine on a larger stage and a potential pathway to an NXT contract, it has also featured a number of fantastic matches, most notably a contest between indy wrestling legends Meiko Satomura and Mercedes Martinez that was so good it briefly turned Michael Cole into a relatable human being who likes watching wrestling. And kicking off 2018 was the first-ever women’s Royal Rumble, a match so historic it got the main event spot for the show, and the evening ended not with some random dude pointing at the Wrestlemania sign, but with the on-screen debut of Ronda Rousey. Pointing at the Wrestlemania sign. So, you know, mostly great.

The second women’s Rumble happened about a week ago, and I was lucky enough to be there in person. The year between the 2018 and 2019 Royal Rumble events has been packed with progress for women (despite it being painfully clear that main roster creative doesn’t know what to do with most of them and doesn’t particularly care) and while the inaugural women’s Rumble was ridiculously fun to watch, I think the 2019 Rumble as a whole is singularly indicative of how far WWE has come, and secretly one of the most important nights for gender equality in wrestling history.

With that in mind, by the power vested in me as a Person What Was In The Audience, I hereby present the following four awards to the 2019 Royal Rumble, each named for one of the people who did really good wrestling things back in 2015 and started this whole thing.

Continue reading “And The Winner Of The 2019 Royal Rumble Is…Women’s Wrestling” →

Tomorrow, NXT will put on its fourth Takeover event in Brooklyn, and if it meets the expectations for Takeover shows being set thus far in 2018, it’s going to be something special. It’s also the perfect opportunity for me to elucidate something I’ve been working on for years now, a kind of Unified Theory of NXT, which views the show’s history since the dawn of the WWE Network as a cyclical phenomenon currently in the middle of its fourth stage. Yes, that is how much I love this wrestling show.

This is the fourth in a four-part series being released weekly between now and NXT Takeover: Brooklyn IV. Part 4 is, just so you know, really fucking long compared to the other three, and that’s because a whole lot of stuff has happened in the past year that needs to be properly parsed in order to come to a true understanding of the history of NXT. In this final installment, I discuss how the NXT roster shook out during a year of transition, and the eight wrestlers who returned the male singles division to the top – only this time, with a couple of twists that speak to the full evolution of this spectacular wrestling promotion.

Continue reading “NXT: 4 Evolutions – The End Is The Beginning Is The End (2017-2018)” →

In two weeks, NXT will put on its fourth Takeover event in Brooklyn, and if it meets the expectations for Takeover shows being set thus far in 2018, it’s going to be something special. It’s also the perfect opportunity for me to elucidate something I’ve been working on for years now, a kind of Unified Theory of NXT, which views the show’s history since the dawn of the WWE Network as a cyclical phenomenon currently in the middle of its fourth stage. Yes, that is how much I love this wrestling show.

This is the third in a four-part series being released weekly between now and NXT Takeover: Brooklyn IV. Part 3 focuses on the NXT tag team division, and how a tossed-together group of jobbers and misfits turned a perennial afterthought into the best and most important part of the show, kept their era going longer than either the main event kings of 2014 or the revolutionary women of 2015, and even took a massive hand in shaping the future that was to come.

Continue reading “NXT: 4 Evolutions – The Tag Team Takeover (2016-17)” →

In three weeks, NXT will put on its fourth Takeover event in Brooklyn, and if it meets the expectations for Takeover shows being set thus far in 2018, it’s going to be something special. It’s also the perfect opportunity for me to elucidate something I’ve been working on for years now, a kind of Unified Theory of NXT, which views the show’s history since the dawn of the WWE Network as a cyclical phenomenon currently in the middle of its fourth stage. Yes, that is how much I love this wrestling show.

This is the second in a four-part series being released weekly between now and NXT Takeover: Brooklyn IV. In Part 2, we focus on 2015, the year that women’s wrestling returned to the United States. By that, of course, I don’t mean that there were no female wrestlers in the U.S. prior to 2015; quite the opposite is true. But it had been almost a decade since women had been treated with anything resembling respect on the WWE stage. Some promotions, such as Total Non-Stop Action Wrestling (now known as Impact Wrestling) had thriving women’s divisions during this period, but WWE is the biggest game in town, and despite the efforts of some members of the talent roster — most notably AJ Lee — it was hard to ignore the fact that the largest wrestling promotion in the world was hiring supermodels and training them just enough to not kill one another while they did battle in Playboy Pillow Fights over a championship that looked like a butterfly or a vagina, depending on who you asked. In 2015, the women of NXT almost single-handedly changed all that, and if the Orlando promotion had done nothing else whatsoever, it would still be worth celebrating for breathing life back into American women’s wrestling.

 

Continue reading “NXT: 4 Evolutions – The Return of Women’s Wrestling (2015)” →

In four weeks, NXT will put on its fourth Takeover event in Brooklyn, and if it meets the expectations for Takeover shows being set thus far in 2018, it’s going to be something special. It’s also the perfect opportunity for me to elucidate something I’ve been working on for years now, a kind of Unified Theory of NXT, which views the show’s history since the dawn of the WWE Network as a cyclical phenomenon currently in the middle of its fourth stage. Yes, that is how much I love this wrestling show.

This is the first of a four-part series that will be released weekly between now and NXT Takeover: Brooklyn IV. In it, I provide an introduction to NXT (and my personal fandom), a brief history of the company (that’s the part with the title “A Brief History of NXT,” in case you were wondering) and an in-depth look at the promotion’s main event picture in 2014. As always, I’ve tried to make my wrestling content as accessible as possible to the newcomer, but I’m sorry, at a certain point you just need to accept that you don’t know who Camacho is and you can trust me when I say you don’t need to.

Continue reading “NXT: 4 Evolutions – Introduction (2014)” →

I caught the live broadcast of WWE Elimination Chamber tonight. I mention this for three reasons. First, They’d Rather Be Right is kind of boring so far. Second, I did promise at one point (both to myself and to an unspecified and completely theoretical audience) that I would spend time between books doing some actual real person blogging about things that are not award-winning sci-fi. Third, as a UOTM reader (or maybe just “Mind reader”), you deserve to be reminded from time to time that the person behind this blog is a somehow simultaneously a political leftist and a professional wrestling fan who watches one person get a predetermined victory over another person and thinks to himself, “I wonder how this fits into the long and sordid history of race and gender in the wrestling industry?”

So, on that note…

Continue reading “Victory Glow: A Brief History of Black Women and Championships in Wrestling” →