Wrestlemania 32 in Dallas (really, Arlington) featured a watershed moment for the women. Three Divas were featured prominently in the event's promotion.
Early on at Wrestlemania, Hall of Famer Lita announced a change in the title for the women. The old pink Diva's championship was replaced with a new Women's Championship. The name change was supposed to signify a new emphasis on the quality of the women's product. Lita pointed out that the women would now be called Superstars, just like the men. Check out the difference in the belts (both carried by Charlotte).
Diva's belt
Women's belt.
I guess we should have known that Sunday in AT&T Stadium that the WWE still didn't know what to do with their ladies. We got a great, amazing triple-threat match during Wrestlemania featuring Charlotte, Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks. And that wasn't the only match with women! There was also the 10-woman Total Divas vs. Other Folks match. If that sounds like a last-minute, thrown together opening match, it was. In fact, thanks to the SEATING PROBLEMS in Arlington, most fans didn't make it into the stadium to see this. But it was the same match WWE has been giving us for decades. All the women come out, they all do a signature spot, and somebody wins. Who won? It absolutely doesn't matter. Here's a preview. Ok, so Brie Bella won, so she could go out on top in her last match (at least for a while, she's apparently busy making babies and reality shows).
But hey, it was a new beginning. Let's check in on our progress this week. On RAW, we had a backstage promo featuring Charlotte, who's defending her title (with help from daddy Ric Flair) against Natalya Neidhardt (who will get help at the next PPV from Bret Hart). But that wasn't all! We also had - an eight-woman tag match. And the winner of the match got. Something. I guess. And herein lies the problem, which is two-fold.
ONE. Matches need to matter. At least Sasha Banks finally managed to mention her undefeated streak. But the women keep getting showcased in big mashup matches that don't have any consequence. WWE could start a women's tag division with the talent on hand, but instead we get 6 and 8-person bouts where nobody has a beef with their opponent. On Monday, the only storytelling involved Charlotte avoiding Natalya. Meanwhile in a similar mashup for the men, Cesaro and the New Day met the Miz and the League of Nations. Everybody involved was feuding with someone on the other side. In fact, for the men, tag matches can be a way to set up new storylines. Wait, can storyline be made plural? That's my next point.
TWO. Superstars deserve stories. Ok, so this isn't just a problem for the women. I mean, how many Superstars on the main roster would LOVE to have some sort of storyline? But generally there are at least 4 or 5 storylines going on, and a couple others sort of simmering so that at a PPV, you get to see big events or conclusions to several stories. For the women, right now there's only one storyline, which is "I want to be the champ". They do embellish it some, so Natalya invokes the "my family has a richer wrestling history than your family" theme, or Becky Lynch throws down the "hard-working indie darling' card during their title challenge. But after the title match, the beef disappears, and the women go back to big mashups with no meaning. In the men's product, it doesn't take a title to make a storyline. Zayn vs. Owens is all about coattails. Cesaro vs. Miz could work just fine without the title, and New Day vs. the LoN hasn't really focused on the titles yet. Even AJ (Styles, not Lee) vs. Roman Reigns is building in a beef, with Reigns getting jumped by Styles' old running buddies from the Bullet Club. There's all sorts of reasons to fight, and the WWE has been using them for years. Competing brothers. Fighting over a girlfriend. New kid making a name for himself. Old veteran protecting his spot. Mid-carder's getting passed over, or scoring a big upset. Big men vs. little men. The Women's division could do stories with ALL of their talent, and feature a couple of those matches each Monday. Instead, they're still an afterthought, like in the meeting they end with "oh and a women's match." WWE, you can do better!
