WWE’s Women’s Evolution ultimately started from WrestleMania 32 back in 2016. However, it was a long time coming as Sasha Banks, Bayley, Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair proved in NXT that women’s wrestling is truly at a different level and they are no longer just mere eye candy, as was the case back in the Attitude Era. Stephanie McMahon is a huge supporter of the movement, and revealed a bombshell record that Ronda Rousey, Becky Lynch, and Charlotte Flair set at WrestleMania 35. She also dropped an NXT vs AEW bombshell recently.
Stephanie McMahon recently spoke to Bloomberg Business of Sports, where she was asked about the increase in female fans that WWE has received lately.
“What happened was we started training and recruiting elite athletes, both male and female, at the Performance Center. I do give all of the credit to my husband. He started really recruiting these elite athletes and he started training women the same as the men. Started giving them the same match times, the same opportunities. And what happened was on NXT, which was our developmental at the time, our fans started chanting ‘women’s wrestling.’ It really gave rise to our fans and empowered them to make change on RAW and Smackdown.”
“It was actually 2015 where we had a women’s tag match that lasted all of 30 seconds in a three hour show. And our fans had had enough. They actually started a hashtag called #GiveDivasAChance, calling for longer matches and better storylines. So we responded in the biggest way we could. And then a year later, at WrestleMania, we rebranded the Divas division as the Women’s Division, we announced we’d call them superstars and created a new championship similar to the men’s belt.”
“Since that time our women have been more regularly headlining and main eventing all of our programming, including WrestleMania 35. Ronda Rousey, Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair broke the gross entertainment revenue record at Met Life Stadium. Not only that but in Abu Dhabi we were actually able to have a women’s match. During that match a chant broke out of ‘this is hope’, which isn’t a normal WWE chant. Alexa Bliss and Sasha Banks saw tears in the eyes of little girls in the front row. And now we’ve had not one, but two women’s matches in Saudi Arabia. And there were chants of ‘this is awesome’ in those matches, which is exactly how it should be.”
The standard for women’s wrestling in WWE will continue to improve as time goes on.
