WWE Accused of Hypocrisy Over Women’s Booking

WWE had long held a policy of choosing female superstars based on looks over ability. That was a consequence of holding 18-35-year-old men as their main demographic. The female roster was used as eye candy for years and was not given much respect or training as actual wrestlers. When the women’s evolution/revolution started, those days seemed to be over.

Wrestling Observer Radio’s Dave Meltzer and Brian Alvarez were recently critical of WWE’s hypocrisy involving women’s wrestling.

Alvarez said:

“Forget the guys. I hit the wall last night. I’ve seen bad matches with Alexa [Bliss], with Nia [Jax], with Lana. If you want me to be excited for this upcoming pay-per-view, show me that you can utilize the talent that you have. They have not showed me that in months.”

Meltzer said:

“That’s because of who they pick on top. For all their talk…it’s pretty girls. If pretty girls can wrestle good, that’s a bonus. ‘We’re gonna put Carmella and Alexa Bliss, that we think are really attractive, we’re gonna put them over whether they’re good, bad, or average.’ Granted, they can both talk which helps; but, still this is more of a delivering in the ring business than it’s ever been in history and you’re putting these sore thumbs out there and you’re not getting a great product when you do that. It is kinda like the ultimate in hypocrisy to go in there and, ‘We’re opening doors and we’re making things fair for women and then we’re looking for women that based entirely on looks as opposed to anything else.’ Not entirely; but, the looks are far more important than they need to be. It’s not like the other women on the roster are unattractive. They’re not unattractive; but, because there’s this feeling that guys will only watch women, if they’re really good looking on television, which is the whole thing of why the women’s matches – I’m not saying they’ve all sucked for the last twenty years – there have been matches that are great and there are good women wrestlers out there, more now than ever before. If you go on the whole of the last twenty years since they’ve revived the women with Sable and Debra [McMichael] and all those women that couldn’t wrestle, the large percentage of women’s matches on big shows have sucked. Some of them have been average. Some of them have been good; but, the overall standard is way way way behind men and there is no reason why the women should be any worse than the men….if it was a real fair world, you would get over on your own merits. You wouldn’t have to do this, ‘Oh we’re so generous, we are creating this Evolution.’ They should just do it on their own and blow the doors down themselves and not be held to these criteria where if you’re not good looking enough – like Lana. What does Lana have in the ring past the fact that she’s really good looking?”

There were a few successful wrestlers that WWE found that were originally models, but for every Trish Stratus that actually became a solid worker, there were three Kelly Kelly’s that could never wrestle.

 

Do you think WWE need to make changes before their first all women’s pay-per-view? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter or on our Discord!

• Kelly Kelly
• sable
• womens division
• Carmella
• Alexa Bliss
• nia jax
• Debra
• Lana
• Trish Stratus
• wwe

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