Rant #2,186: Ladies Night

Some major news took place last night on WWE's Raw Monday night show--even getting coverage by mainstream media like Newsweek--so I figured I would continue the professional wrestling jag that I started yesterday to talk about it.

And ladies, normally I know that this is your exit point, but this time, please read on. You might find this of interest.

On last night's show, the opening featured all the wrestlers on the WWE roster coming out to hear an announcement that was going to involve them.

Greeting them were three major players in the WWE, including Chairman Vince McMahon, his daughter Stephanie, and her husband, Paul Levecq, better known as Triple H.

Through phony tears and platitudes, the No. 1 wrestling organization in the world--a multi-billion dollar organization--announced that on Sunday, October 28, it was going to stage something called "Evolution" at Nassau Coliseum right here on Long Island.

"Evolution" was going to be something totally off the wall and special, as it was going to be the organization's first pay per view event featuring entirely a female cast.

That's right--no men allowed.

All of the WWE female championships would be fought on that evening's card, there will be a new women's tag team title that takes place, and the annual Mae Young Classic--a gauntlet type of match featuring potentially a few dozen wrestlers at a time pummeling themselves--would also be held that evening.

History or marketing ploy--actually a lot of both--this is something worth talking about,

Females who are professional wrestlers have changed incredibly since the early days, where Fabulous Moolah ruled the roost for a generation as the top female wrestler in the world--and she kind of looked like it, if you know what I mean.

Female wrestlers during the early days were one step above strippers as far as relevance and respectability, and while there were numerous ladies who made it in the pro ranks--Moolah and Mae Young were two of those--most female wrestlers looked the worse for wear, and they were pretty much looked at as oddities, one step above--or sometimes one step below--the midgets as relevant athletes.

Things did not change when TV pretty much turned to all color, and, in fact, the use of color actually accentuated the negatives of female wrestlers, pretty much that they weren't in there for their looks, very important when dealing with a mainly male audience.

Things began to change in the late 1970s to mid 1980s. The WWE got the idea to meld athleticism with beauty, and with the Rock and Roll period of wrestling, they began to recruit not necessarily wrestlers, but other female athletes--including body builders and trainers--to their female ranks.

At least the eye candy gave the mainly male audience something to look at, but with the numerous night gown, bathing suit, lingerie and other beauty pageent type matches, women were still looked at as pretty much nothing more than oddities.

Things continued this way into the 1990s and through the early 2000s. The WWE was looking for female athletes who also looked good, and a number of their female athletes had Playboy pictorials to boost their appeal.

They were beautiful, but the two-minute matches that they went through showed that not only couldn't they wrestle, but they were still not much more than eye candy and not to be taken seriously.

A few years back, the WWE saw the potential of their female wrestlers, and actually began signing up those who not only looked good, but also could wrestle, to a certain extent, and they boosted the profile of their female roster by having other spinoff TV shows highlighting these women for a growing female wrestling audience, including Divas and the Bella Twins.

Flash forward to yesterday, and the WWE's recent experience in Saudi Arabia--where they could bring their male wrestlers to perform, but their female wrestlers couldn't do much of anything--supposedly spurred on this idea of having an all-female show--something that rival Impact Wrestling has already done several times on pay per view.

But when the WWE does it, it makes news.

The problem was that in their generally skimpy attire and with their pumped up bodies--naturally and through human methods--female wrestlers probably will never attain the overall acceptability of the wrestling audience, even with more and more females becoming fans of the sport.

And then you had Stephanie McMahon, herself a former wrestling champion that was involved in numerous storylines about her supposed romances with male wrestlers, including the one that was real with Triple H, and who has herself been "enhanced" to fill her role as a wrestler prior to her current role as a WWE executive, said something to the effect that "the days of the 30 second match was over" for female wrestlers--

Yet a few minutes later, the first female match of the night lasted about two minutes.

Yes, the WWE has always been one for hypocrisy--how can you legitimize a certain part of your roster if they are wearing bikini tops and letting it all hang out, so to speak--and "Evolution" won't change that at all.

But it will give female wrestlers a show to themselves, where the WWE can gauge if this direction is a legitimate one or just more exploitation.

And you just know it is quite a bit of both.