Women's Wrestling

By: Katherine

After AEW's Dynamite went off the air on Wednesday, many IWCs had much to say regarding the match between Dr. Britt Baker and Taya Valkyrie. It seems that fans tweeted or (X'ed) Taya with some rude comments after her match. Comments that I will not repeat here, but if you care to see them you can look at Taya's Twitter account. Was the match a five-star match, no but it was not bad. How many of those who made comments about how bad the match was are willing to get into a ring and perform like these two ladies? I will wait for your answer....

Fans complain about women's wrestling not getting enough air time or not being booked properly. Which a fan was clearly advocating for during Wednesday's Dynamite with a sign that read "Book the Women's Division Better." Have the women's division on Dynamite been lacking? Of course, but those same fans bitching about wanting more women's matches are more than likely the same fans making these rude comments to Baker and Valkyrie or not even watching AEW in the first place. They just want to get on social media and bitch about something.

If you want to see some good women's matches, I highly suggest checking out the ROH women's division or IMPACT's women's division. Just last night on ROH, there were four, yes FOUR women's matches on the show. You may ask why is that case? Well for one, ROH does not have a television deal and is streamed on their own website. This allows for more time and more women's matches to be presented. Within the U.S., IMPACT has the best women's division and uses them properly. Is this due to IMPACT having the influence of a great woman's wrestler working for them by the name of Gail Kim, possibly? ROH does have the benefit of having its own great female wrestler working for them with Maria Kanellis Bennett, who currently has her own women's wrestling promotion going on right now. Speaking of that, how many of you fans that want more women's wrestling are watching this on YouTube? Probably NONE!!! The question becomes for AEW are they willing to let someone like Maria take over the women's division? At the current moment, I would say probably not, because their owner, whom I am a huge fan of, is not willing to let go of that creative pen (another post for another time).

So, what can be done to improve women's wrestling? Give them more matches on TV, why, just for you fans to bitch and complain about it more. Focusing on AEW who only has 2 hours of television time on Wednesday, 1 hour on Fridays (don't get me started on that), and the addition of 2 hours on Saturday could they add more women's matches? And while the focus is on AEW, what about all the times WWE has scrapped a scheduled women's match and not replaced it with another women's match? There have been Raws and Smackdowns without any women's matches and there was no bitching and complaining, but AEW has one women's match that is not perfect and the IWC goes to telling the talent they are talentless. Again, get your butt into a ring and do what they do. Sure they could, but people also need to realize that women's wrestling does not sell as well as men's. Add women to factions that wrestling promotions already have? Not every faction needs a female presence in it.

I want to address one comment I read on Twitter, where a person said "Bad wrestling is bad wrestling." Agreed, that goes for both men and women. "I'm against inappropriate comments about someone's body, etc. Again, agreed that goes for both men and women because I have seen the IWC criticize men's bodies too. "But if the performers can't take the criticism and critical thinking, then maybe this business isn't for you." There is a difference between criticism and being outright rude and insulting. Criticism is, hey that move you did came across looking a little weak or ineffective. That is criticism. What is not criticism is when you tell someone they are fat.

There is not a clear-cut solution on how to improve women's wrestling, but what is clear is that if you don't watch women's wrestling and support it fully, then you have no right to complain when two women have a match that is not 5 stars. Everyone has an "off" night and this could have been the case in the Baker/Valkyrie match.