The Second Chance

“In the professional wrestling world, Sasha Banks and Bayley headlined NXT Takeover: Respect in the first ever 30-minute Ironwoman match for the NXT Women’s Championship. NXT is World Wrestling Entertainment’s third brand, making NXT Takeover: Respect the first time in the company’s 35-year long history that women main evented a WWE special event. The tide was turning and just months later, the WWE would echo these sentiments on their main roster. For years, the female wrestlers on Monday Night Raw and Thursday Night Smackdown had been referred to and marketed as “Divas”. Although the term originally stood for being strong, sassy, sexy, and powerful, over the years it came to receive a negative connotation of being catty and egomaniacal. Even the Divas Championship was a gaudy, silver and pink butterfly-shaped belt that looked more like a children’s toy than a championship.

© WWE

 At WWE’s biggest event of the year, Wrestlemania 32, the stakes for an already historic triple threat match for the WWE Divas Championship got even higher. Upon the conclusion of the match between Sasha Banks, Becky Lynch, and Charlotte, the Divas Championship was officially retired and replaced with a new WWE Women’s Championship. In addition to the new title, for the first time, the women’s title match at Wrestlemania was given the same courtesies as the one for the men’s WWE World Heavyweight Championship. The entrances were extravagant, the crowd was invested in the storytelling of the match, and ample time was given for the women to work and put on what was widely regarded as match of the night. The new women’s title is a smaller version of the WWE World Heavyweight Championship to symbolize that the women of the WWE are no longer “Divas” and will be referred to as Superstars just like their male counterparts.”

These two paragraphs were taken directly from my high school senior project on the rise of women’s sports in 2015. To set the scene, the U.S soccer women’s national team had just won their third World Cup trophy, Serena Williams won three Grand Slams in a year, and teams not named UConn had finally become major players in women’s college basketball. Despite these monumental achievements, it was wrestling that captivated me most. I was 17 and had watched wrestling for over half of my life at that point. I saw Lita’s belongings auctioned off in a “ho sale” after her retirement match, the final bra and panties match on live TV, and sub-5 minute women’s matches on a regular basis for most of my adolescence.

© WWE

On February 23, 2015, everything “changed”. Paige (Saraya) & Emma (Tenille Dashwood) faced The Bella Twins in a 30-second match on Raw that provoked social media outrage about WWE’s treatment of their female wrestlers, culminating in the viral #GiveDivasAChance hashtag. The rest is written in the history books (and my high school senior project).

This isn’t to say that great women’s wrestling never existed before 2015. Joshi wrestling in Japan has always been miles ahead of the game, and TNA’s Knockouts division plus the contributions of promotions like SHIMMER carried North American women’s wrestling during the 2000s and early 2010s. Also in the mid-2010s, NXT would begin a trend of running circles around the main roster when it came to the presentation of women, especially the Four Horsewomen: Charlotte, Sasha Banks (Mercedes Moné), Bayley, and Becky Lynch. However, the monopoly was still in full swing and there was no bigger wrestling platform in the world than main roster WWE. Going from matches under a minute long to the main event of Wrestlemania in the span of four years genuinely felt like the leap that would push women’s wrestling into the stratosphere forever.

© WWE

If you asked 17 year old me what wrestling would look like by the time I was 27, I probably would’ve said women would main event no less than 3 PPVs a year and 30-minute ironwoman matches would be a thing of the past because by 2025, hour long ironwoman matches would be the norm. The best women wrestlers in the world would be paid on par with their male counterparts and women would lead the charge in wrestling’s next eventual surge in popularity.

I could’ve never anticipated all the next ten years would hold. For one, a brand new promotion entered the chat. All Elite Wrestling, a vibrant alternative promotion that promised to “change the world” entered the pro wrestling landscape in 2019 and nothing was the same again. Second, the talent pool of North American women’s wrestling developed into its greatest form (so far). From freak athletes turned wrestling powerhouses like Bianca Belair and Kris Statlander to international living legends like Toni Storm and IYO SKY to legitimate GOAT contenders like Mercedes Moné and Athena, there is no shortage of main event worthy talent in both major companies.

© WWE

Despite this, the window of opportunity for women on wrestling’s largest stages feels smaller than it has in years. WWE hasn’t platformed women in the main event of Wrestlemania in four years and that won’t change this year, despite three of the company’s most popular stars competing for the WWE Women’s World Championship and Charlotte Flair winning the Royal Rumble. Neither of the company’s secondary women’s title holders are defending their titles during the two-night event and one of them will be competing for the tag titles. Last year’s Wrestlemania featured three women’s matches across two nights, totaling less than 40 minutes over ten hours. 

Over at AEW, from September 2024 to March 2025 the women’s division tied for the highest-rated North American women’s match of 2024 according to Wrestling Observer newsletter (Willow Nightingale and Kris Statlander’s All Out street fight). They placed four out of ten matches on Sports Illustrated’s 2024 Women’s Top 10 list with an AEW wrestler at #1 (Mercedes Moné). The division’s defining storyline between Toni Storm and Mariah May captivated audiences around the world and resulted in Storm landing the number one spot on Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s 2024 Women’s 250 as well as their Woman of the Year award, plus May taking home Most Improved.

© AEW

After 18 months of matches and unforgettable moments all over the world, Toni Storm and Mariah May’s Hollywood Ending STILL couldn’t main event Revolution 2025 despite a lackluster men’s world title program. The brutal conclusion to Storm and May’s rivalry made history as the first North American women’s match to be rated five stars by Wrestling Observer Newsletter and the actual Revolution PPV main event is regarded as one of the worst AEW PPV main events of all-time. Dynamite, the company’s flagship TV show, still averages one women’s match a show, non-title matches on PPV are a rarity, and both women’s titles getting booked on PPV isn’t always guaranteed.

On a larger scale, women’s sports are more popular and marketable than they’ve ever been. Major brands partnering with standout female athletes is increasingly more common. Viewership and attendance records are reaching (and in some cases, surpassing) record levels and major sports media entities such as Bleacher Report have expanded their women’s sports coverage. Formula One racing notably launched their F1 Academy to recruit more women in every facet of the motorsport world.

In the face of all the progress happening for women elsewhere, wrestling has failed to follow suit. Both WWE and AEW launched deals with streaming giants in 2025, Netflix and MAX respectively. Wrestling’s visibility and accessibility has expanded while opportunities for women have been noticeably limited – and that’s just the wrestlers. If you look at wrestling from a wider lens (management, creative, commentary, media publications/outlets, etc), women are few and far in-between, even fewer if you’re looking for women of color. Janel Grant’s sexual assault and trafficking case against WWE and Vince McMahon still looms over the wrestling world as an uncomfortable reminder that wrestling has never been and may never be a safe environment for women.

© AEW

Even though it feels bleak at times, there are many reasons to remain hopeful. Most of the greatest North American women’s matches of all time took place over the last ten years. In real time, we’re getting to witness the leaders of the women’s revolution wrestle a new generation of young women they directly inspired. We’ve seen women showcase their versatility in tag team wrestling, hardcore bloodbaths, and straight up one-on-one classics with a few becoming trilogies. Historically male promotions Ring of Honor and New Japan Pro Wrestling played a large role in platforming women’s wrestling with multiple women’s main events over the last two years.

The diversity of the current crop of talent across all major companies has allowed little girls all over the globe to see themselves represented on screen. Speaking of the globe, as far as I’m concerned women have embraced the “Forbidden Door” concept better than anyone else. Years from now, we will look back at Mercedes Moné’s January 2023 Wrestle Kingdom debut and the inaugural NJPW Strong Women’s Championship tournament in the months that followed as the catalyst of the most talented era of women’s wrestling North America has ever seen. The best wrestlers from the U.S., U.K., Japan, and Mexico facing each other is now a semi-regular occurrence, in no small part because of top stars like Moné understanding that women’s wrestling is at a crucial point in its history and for it to progress to the heights it has long deserved, the revolution must truly be global.

Unfortunately, in the words of Kendrick Lamar, “It’s not enough.”
All-woman PPVs and TV shows have been thrown around since 2018’s WWE Evolution as talking points to “solve” the problems of time and opportunity that continue to plague women’s wrestling. While I think the occasional all-women PPV is a great idea, especially in an interpromotional context ala Big Egg Universe 1994, these shows should always be utilized in addition to, rather than instead of, presenting women on par with the rest of the roster routinely. There is no reason why women’s wrestling should not be a priority on TV and PPV in 2025 and bookers should be held accountable every time they fall short.

These women consistently making lemonade out of lemons is a testament to their talent and brilliance, but it’s also a direct indictment of how they’ve been mishandled and underutilized by the companies to which they’re employed. Wrestlemania cannot legitimately be the “grandest stage of them all” without the women who directly influenced WWE’s resurgence in popularity being presented as the main event level talents they are. AEW cannot legitimately be “where the best wrestle” until the multiple S- and A-tier women performers on their roster are positioned at the forefront just like their male peers.

In the final paragraph of my high school senior project I wrote, “Although women in the sports world have progressed leaps and bounds over the last 30 years, there is still a long way to go. The Cinderella stories in sports always signal a changing of the guard and allow new faces into the upper echelon of sports. Still, change won’t truly occur until women are treated as equals when they play sports and as they report on it.” My greatest hope is that when the 17 year olds in 2035 talk about women’s wrestling, they will talk about progress that never regresses and legends that are larger than the gendered obstacles that stand in their way. The future of the sport depends on it.

By Lyric Swinton

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