A couple of weeks ago, Ruby Soho, Anna Jay, Willow Nightingale, and Tay Melo competed in a street fight on AEW Rampage. This upcoming Saturday, 30 WWE Women’s wrestlers will compete in a Royal Rumble match. Ten years ago, this didn’t seem possible. A few weeks ago, Vince McMahon returned to his duties of WWE Chairman after leaving the company briefly due to an investigation. An investigation that includes sexual assault allegations and millions of dollars of hush money. Ten years ago, this would not have been shocking, and it isn’t shocking today.
In 2015, WWE kicked off their Women’s Evolution. An evolution meant to bring equality for women’s wrestlers, more T.V time and longer, more intense matches. An evolution that had been building for years, yearned for for decades. A lot of people would consider the evolution a success, after all, it started what would be a groundbreaking eight years for women’s wrestling across the board. However, as the evolution has been a success on screen and all across the professional wrestling landscape, it is clear that off screen, behind the scenes, nothing has changed. Women’s wrestlers are still seen as less than and do not see the same respect their male counterparts receive. This is evident in the way the Vince McMahon situation has been handled.
In the summer of 2020, women’s wrestlers in and out of the ring started the Speaking Out Movement. The idea was to share stories of the mistreatment they faced in the wrestling business. A huge chunk of these stories were about sexual assault and rape. Without doing the exact calculations, I would estimate over half of the men named in this movement are still employed in the wrestling business today, some of them being coveted superstars in major wrestling companies. This is another piece of evidence that the women’s evolution is all for show. Sure, women’s wrestlers have been given more opportunities than ever to compete in grueling, attention grabbing matches, most of them skyrocketing to new heights of success. Women’s wrestling is now viewed as something incredible and game changing. But if there has been no real change in backstage politics can we really call this evolution a success? Does it really mean anything if women can’t speak out about their horrendous, unimaginable experiences and see real change happen? No, it doesn’t.
Vince McMahon returning to power, no matter what the reasons are, is a slap in the face to women everywhere, but especially those who’ve faced sexual violence in their lifetimes. Not only that, it puts WWE employees in a terrible position, do they keep working for a company where the person within said company just settled a rape lawsuit, or do they give up their livelihood and leave?
Yes, the evolution brought some change. Women are main eventing albeit scarcely, they’re having matches no one ever thought possible, they’re selling out buildings, and inspiring a whole new generation of wrestlers. The evolution did change the landscape of professional wrestling forever. However, if the women’s evolution was ever about the actual women who put their bodies and their lives on the line for the incredible world of professional wrestling, if this so called evolution ever meant anything more than trying to get fans and talent to shut up about women’s rights and equality, Vince McMahon- and any other person with sexual assault allegations against them- would be completely ousted from the industry. But this would never happen in the realm of professional wrestling, it would never happen in any professional environment. As much as fans, and talent, were lead to believe that that fateful day in July 2015 would lead to real change, real progression, at the end of the day nothing changed because the system it was built on was, and still is, filled with white men in suits who care about money and power and certainly not about their women employees.
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