Why is women's wrestling so sloppy?

[Boo!]

I get that those who belong in the "I want world peace *giggles, walks off* " category being poor in ring, but over the years if we take the WWE's women's wrestling it does seem incredibly...botchy, by comparison.

Recently I was re-watching either the 1987 or 1988 Survivor Series and there was a women's match on that and had some, presumably fully trained, wrestlers. They weren't babes in bikinis and yet they were almost literally falling over their own feet. It was horrible. Even as women's wrestling made a return following hiatus in mid 1990s and again later on, none of it seemed very good and compared to the men it all seemed very sloppy and amateurish.

I've hard good things about Japanese women's wrestling but what is it that makes it very hard for women to successfully execute the north American 'style' of wrestling, particularly those employed by WWE.

[ratetankmark]

It's a shame you aren't Bobby because this thread would have been perfect for you to say "If I wanted women to wrestle I would've set up a ring in my kitchen" but on a serious note, even though it's admittedly a niche market, there is some damn good North American women's wrestling.

Have you heard of a promotion called Shimmer?

[Cranjis McBasketball]

The women's wrestling I watch on websites I can't mention is much, much sloppier.

[Hit Girl]

In WWE it's because many of the women they have hired over the years are only mildly interested in being wrestlers.

[thelonewolf527]

Dec 7, 2013 4:38:01 GMT -5 Cranjis McBasketball said:

The women's wrestling I watch on websites I can't mention is much, much sloppier.

Please "surrender" these websites

[Heartbreaker]

Ugh... another one of these threads...

In today's WWE, the women are only given about three minutes for a match so of course they are gonna look sloppy when they have to rush. Then there's a lot of divas being awful wrestlers or not caring, the divas who actually can wrestle end up looking bad too because they have to carry them through that very rushed, short match.

[Cranjis McBasketball]

Dec 7, 2013 4:52:46 GMT -5 thelonewolf527 said:

Dec 7, 2013 4:38:01 GMT -5 Cranjis McBasketball said:

The women's wrestling I watch on websites I can't mention is much, much sloppier.

Please "surrender" these websites

I'm pretty sure I can't.....I had another to put in there, decided against it. If you're a wrestling fan, you already know it anyway.

[Deleted]

The women hired are hired to be hot. We've seen the "ads". They'll sign an actual wrestler, or someone that at least has passion for it, but it's usually 1-2 at a time per roster.

Then they get 90 second matches, where even someone getting better is going to end up botching by trying to do too much within the time frame.

[DIIV]

Dec 7, 2013 4:17:28 GMT -5 Boo! said:

I've hard good things about Japanese women's wrestling

[4real]

The AJ Kaitlyn match at Payback earlier this year was fantastic and shows what can be done when WWE puts, you know, time and effort into a Diva's storyline.

[crowwreak was WRONG]

Because AJ, Kaitlyn, Natalya and Paige are the only ones on the roster who seem to give a shit.

[Andrew is Good]

It is weird, but the Jumping Bomb Angels back then were actually quite talented. I have a tape called WWF Around the World from 1987, and they had a feature match with the Jumping Bomb Angels, I forget their opponents, but it was an excellent match. I think a lot of those women at the time were a lot older, especially on the heel team.

With nowadays, if you watch matches with people like Natalya and Paige on NXT this past week, you can get a great match out of wrestlers. We also had Tori for instance, who I thought used to be talented, but in hindsight, had to be one of the worst offenders and was just awful. There are technically sound female wrestlers, but I think it just happens to be the ones WWE puts on television who are really bad.

[________ has left the building]

Because people's standards have changed. I been watching wrestling since the early 80's and seen women who are considered legends in wrestling have some shitty matches. A number of those matches were decent at best. The Moolah Girls era of WWF had every women wrestling the same way with was the basics. Only time the formula got changed was when the latest Japanese import came in. Once some fans started to watch Joshi, they no longer wanted to see armbars and head scissors. They wanted big suplexes and high flying moves. A faster pace. People grade them on a harsher scale nowadays. Eve, Michelle McCool, Layla, Alicia Fox, and a number of the model divas are just as good if not better than their indy counterparts. But they won't get much praise because they haven't came up from the indies or wrestled international before coming to WWE. WWE hire women with indy experience of various levels. The problem is that some of the lesser workers can bring down a match and when a wrestler does improve, few will recognize it because of past mistakes that performer made in the ring.

[1 Free Moon-Down with Burger]

Is it weird to anyone else that Kaitlyn is considered 'one of the good ones' now?

Considering that she hasn't improved much at all besides adding a spear to her moveset....I don't get it.

[Deleted]

Well...I would imagine it would be because women have only just recently (last 5-10 years) been given a serious opportunity to learn to wrestle.

I mean, imagine the misogyny in a wrestling locker room in the 1980's or 90's.

"Hey guys, i want to learn to wrestle."
"Whatever ring rat...." - this is an exaggeration of course.

But recently there are more women getting the chance to REALLY learn to that helps. As far as RAW and SD goes though, because the writers only care about hiring models and pushing TOtal Divas - the matches are gonna suck when they're 2 mins long with 1 min of that being Total Divas drama.

Heck, just this week on NXT Paige and Natalia had a damn fine match. Not sloppy in the least.

[Deleted]

"They all are Sloppy Jalopy!"

[Apricots And A Pear Tree]

Sara Del Rey ain't a miracle worker.

[SEAN CARLESS]

Back then, Moolah trained them to do Moolah matches, and she herself was highly mediocre.

Judy Martin however was a very good hand, despite being partially trained by Moolah (but mentored more by the infinitely more talented Judy Grable), and once Lei Lani Kai (Moolah's last protege) started tagging with her, their collective work really tightened up and was quite good, especially their matches with the Jumping Bomb Angels, which in '87 was WWF's ladies version of the Midnights vs the R&R's -- an awesome traveling act that delivered every time.

In the early-mid 90's, Madusa, as Alundra Blayze, started having a great matches with the awesomely talented Bull Nakano, including the 2nd best match at Summer Slam '94, and easily the best women's match ever on RAW in early '95 wherein Blayze took the belt back. Also, the entire Aja Kong vs Alundra Survivor Series match at that year's Sur Ser was AWESOME. And this is because the women in japan are put through the same stringent standards over there as the men. They are allowed to be great athletes and learn their craft completely from actual veterans --instead of like today's WWE, where they're given a finish, two minutes (that they often get told during mid-match that its now been shortened further) and programmed with someone as green or greener than them on TV and the road.

That is the main culprit as to why WWE women's matches come off poorly. There's no house show mentor system. In the territory days, debuting guys would be programmed with road mentors to tighten up their craft. The most latest example of this being Lashley with Finlay in 2006. It's how newbies learned actual in-ring psychology and timing, as opposed to just the worthless cardio shit Demott has them doing in Florida, with no focus on why and when to do stuff.

This is why I feel bad for the ladies. Finlay used to work really hard with them, producing their matches, but WWE sabotaged it by cutting away 2/3rds of their spots and psychology to the point where people are going home in sixty seconds. A male newcomer would fail just as huge under that broken system as much as they do. It's not their fault. You can only learn if you get a proper platform to perform.

That said, WWE needs to figure out just what the f*** the Divas are. They've de-sexualized the acts, so they're not cheesecake anymore, but at the same time, they're not given respect or time or protected as athletes. They've become a commercial bumper between men's wrestling and storlines. They kind of just appear for no reason. And if I was a woman, desperate to learn my craft, I'd be furious at this.

[Urethra Franklin]

Because most of the time the women who you're watching wrestle aren't actually wrestlers.

If you slap me into some scrubs and shove me into an operating room, I sure as shit still ain't a surgeon.

[RowdyRobbyPiper]

If you put Nattie or Tamina Snuka in a match where they can be allowed to stretch out and actually tell a story you might wind up with something a lot better than the average Divas match. And I REALLY loathe WWE calling their female athletes "divas". Again, that's no better than what Moolah and her protégés were doing to women's wrestling.