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Post by A Platypus Rave is Correct on Feb 24, 2019 16:31:57 GMT -5
The slut shaming was due to the fans, and for how the company reacted to the Matt Hardy saga. Also it happened when she was mostly retired from in ring.
The difference between Trish and Lita's retirement is also a face and heel retirement but even so it was a pretty terrible idea especially if Lita wasn't ok with it as reported.
Also again Naomi and Eva Marie both begged the company to let them get more training and were flat out told no.
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Woo
Hank Scorpio
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Post by Woo on Feb 24, 2019 16:32:28 GMT -5
WWE pushed women to the forefront of their programming once they were able to develop a roster full of visually-appealing, talented women. Prior to the past couple years they have never had that. That's just flat out not true. Go back in time to 2005 and hire Rain, Lacey, MsChif, Daizee Haze, Cheerleader Melissa, Sarah Stock, Becky Lynch and Nikki Roxx. All of them far more talented than what they had. They could have hired them and done a Divas revolution a decade earlier. Haze could have been a proto-Bayley, Lacey and Rain could have easily filled the beautiful bitchy girl hell gimmicks they love so much and we're far superior to LayCool and the Bella Twins. MsChif could have gotten over just like Lita. The gimmick is a licence to print money and of you want more women with unique look then you hire Awesome Kong in the mid 00's. You want to appeal to the latina crowd then hire Mercedes Martinez, you want the best all round female in the US then Sara Del Rey is right there and Madison Eagles is incredible. Later on you have Portia Perez who can wrestle, who can commentate, who can be a booker and who can talk circles around everyone and is a great magnet and you don't hire her? Nicole Matthews can do everything too and she has the look, yet they don't hire her either. So no, they could have hired visually appealing talented women fifteen years ago.
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Woo
Hank Scorpio
Posts: 5,317
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Post by Woo on Feb 24, 2019 16:34:12 GMT -5
The slut shaming was due to the fans, and for how the company reacted to the Matt Hardy saga. Also it happened when she was mostly retired from in ring. The difference between Trish and Lita's retirement is also a face and heel retirement but even so it was a pretty terrible idea especially if Lita wasn't ok with it as reported. Also again Naomi and Eva Marie both begged the company to let them get more training and were flat out told no. Yeah, but that would have died down had the WWE handled it better. Bless her, she made it work, but the WWE were equally to blame.
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Post by Jokaine on Feb 24, 2019 16:46:08 GMT -5
WWE pushed women to the forefront of their programming once they were able to develop a roster full of visually-appealing, talented women. Prior to the past couple years they have never had that. That's just flat out but true. Go back in time to 2005 and hire Rain, Lacey, MsChif, Daizee Haze, Cheerleader Melissa, Sarah Stock, Becky Lynch and Nikki Roxx. All of them far more talented than what they had. They could have hired them and done a Divas revolution a decade earlier. Haze could have been a proto-Bayley, Lacey and Rain could have easily filled the beautiful bitchy girl hell gimmicks they love so much and we're far superior to LayCool and the Bella Twins. MsChif could have gotten over just like Lita. The gimmick is a licence to print money and of you want more women with unique look then you hire Awesome Kong in the mid 00's. You want to appeal to the latina crowd then hire Mercedes Martinez, you want the best all round female in the US then Sara Del Rey is right there and Madison Eagles is incredible. Later on you have Portia Perez who can wrestle, who can commentate, who can be a booker and who can talk circles around everyone and is a great magnet and you don't hire her? Nicole Matthews can do everything too and she has the look, yet they don't hire her either. So no, they could have hired visually appealing talented women fifteen years ago. I gave full credit to Ronda Rousey opening up the door for women by showing they could draw money in a similar environment. And as sexist as it may sound, you skipped over the "roster full," statement by pointing to two women with the "beautiful and bitchy comment." You use a lot of hypotheticals about who could have done what (MsChif getting over like Lita) but the reality none of the people you listed have ever sold out a venue on American soil that held 500 people. Could they have? Sure maybe. But you're doing a hell of a lot of assuming that they could have come close to building the interest that Charotte Flair and Sasha Banks did.
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Post by sammyg007 on Feb 24, 2019 16:46:27 GMT -5
Other than Wendy Richter, no one really cared in the 80's. Velvet McIntyre vs. Sherri Martel didn't exactly sell out any houses. After Richter left the company, the fans wanted zero to do with women wrestling, only Sherri showing a leg and Liz being Liz. I remember watching Rockin Robin vs. Judy Martin during a Royal Rumble PPV, for the title, and you could hear a pin drop. It was there, and Japan had a huge women's division, but not here. It wasn't what American fans wanted.
90's was a different animal. People wanted sex in everything. Some of the most popular movies during that era had nudity in them, sex was all over music outside of grunge, although some of the ladies bands had a sex angle going on (L7, Lita Ford) Wrestling was no exception. Unless you got subscriptions to WOW Magazine and had tapes from Japan, sex in wrestling is all you saw. They tried in WWF with Alundra Blayze and Bull Nakano, and it sold for a minute. The fans cared for Sunny, not Akira Hokato or Monster Ripper. WCW thought they had something in Madusa when she threw the title in the garbage, but it died rather quickly. They cared for her when she was in a tiny bikini, and needed Missy Hyatts innuendos.. WWF had some real wrestlers out there, but no one wanted to watch a Jackie Moore vs. Ivory title match. They wanted Debra and Sable. Again, the company tried, but no one was buying.
2000's was different. Trish dropped the TNA gimmick and Lita was coming around. Unless you were a smark, and at that time there wasn't as many as there are now, Gail Kim was a filler till Torrie Wilson and Dawn Marie wrestled around in garter belts and stockings for the thousandth time. And even still, Trish's biggest WWF moment happened during angle where she was being stalked by a psycho lesbian-type who grabbed her lady parts during their big blowoff and licked her fingers. Lita was popular, but that was about it, although I suspect it was because we could see her underpants, as well as her ability in the ring. But it was starting to happen.
2010 was of course the Divas Division, and yes, Johnny Aces decisions were crappy. But who were the most popular women of that time? Candice Michelle, Kelly Kelly and the Bellas. Beth Phoenix was there, and for a moment seemed to turn it around, but the fans really didn't care. She wasn't sexy in the "Hollywood" sense. She was strong like Chyna, but she wasn't taking her clothes of for Playboy, so she was there....but not THERE.
Paige is right. At times, the opportunity was there, but the fans rejected it. They wanted puppies when Molly Holly was giving them technical mat based wrestling. They wanted Legs when Jazz was showing the world what a badass really was. They wanted Chyna in Playboy, when Chyna was winning the womens title at Wrestlemania. It took people like her and the Bellas learning to actually wrestle, as well as NXT taking a shot at it in the early days. She's 100 percent right here. I get there has to be an outrage over the guy at the top, but he's about to let two or three women take the top spot at the biggest show of the year. Already he's let them go on last at a few PPVs, gave them a Royal Rumble (which some on theses boards are already rejecting only after 2 tries) Why is he doing this? Because the fans have changed. It's what we want. So he's delivering.
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Post by CMPunkyBrewster on Feb 24, 2019 16:55:57 GMT -5
Alright, I'm about to hand out some Hard to Swallow pills... She's absolutely right. The WWE never held women back. Now, did they treat women's wrestling SERIOUSLY? No. But until a few years ago, their women's wrestling wasn't meant to be taken seriously. They never, ever cared about match quality as it pertained to the women. The women were there for T&A. Hence, they didn't hire female wrestlers, they hired models, actresses, and just plain pretty ladies. They weren't there to be great wrestlers, they were there to entertain and titilate the predominantly male audience. Over the time that spanned from Wrestlemania 1 until 2005 or later, they only hired a handful of women who were anything more than passable in the ring. It's not like they were hiring all these amazing female wrestlers and making them do jello matches. They were largely hiring women who were suitable for jello matches and nothing else. And on that platform, the women were never, ever held back. Sable, Torrie Wilson, Chyna, Stacy Keibler, Kelly Kelly, Sunny, Terri Runnels, the Kat, and many others became huge stars and focal points of the shows at various times. Were they good wrestlers or taken seriously in the ring? Absolutely not. Were they meant to be? Absolutely not. Held back? Not even kinda. They did exactly what they were paid to do, and again, became huge stars in the process, many of whom have managed to transcend the wrestling business and become stars outside of it. Plus, as someone else pointed out, during the times when they DID take women's wrestling seriously, it was promoted and pushed the same way as the men. Most people forget that Wendi Richter was one of their most heavily pushed and promoted stars in the early-to-mid 80s, and presented her matches as every bit as important as any others, and more so than most, actually. It's also important to note that it's really only been in the last decade that women's wrestling has started to become a major thing in America. The pool of female talent who could really go was very, very shallow for a long, long time, especially in America. Also, this Twitter thread is really good at basically noting all the stories of women of the era of Victoria, Melina and McCool being treated like dog crap for various reasons. An entire Twitter thread about women of the Divas era and current being held back. Even ones who were hired not for their wrestling ability, they wanted to do more than what they were allowed to do. Told not to do anything that made the men look bad, or not to look too real, or hey your 15 minute match is now 30 seconds. So no, they were absolutely held back by WWE. Not to mention, just the act of WWE not taking women's wrestling seriously is an act of holding back the women. When you present an entire generation of fans with a product that says that women only matter if they're taking their clothes off, you are creating a mindset in those fans that takes so very long to undo. And even when you get good to great wrestlers you are giving them little time to have anything resembling a quality match. The entire mindset of booking for the women in that time period was detrimental to women's wrestling in America as a whole. There's not a single thing listed in there that has not happened to men, except the whole "this or that was TOO good", which sounds like complete horseshit and would be resoundingly laughed at if said by a man. And even then, there are stories of guys being berated for going out and being too good and making the rest of the guys look weak. Look, I'm not saying that ANY of what I said in my original post is RIGHT. I'm simply saying that it's reality. I find the way they used women for a long time as reprehensible as the next guy. But you're confusing "wrong" and "bad" with "held back". In order to hold someone back, you have to prevent them from being used to their full potential, or not allowing them to use their full potential. The fact is, they used basically every one of the women they had to their full potential, actually FAR MORE than their full potential in most cases, because many of them had basically no potential pertaining to the wrestling business anyway. They weren't hiring Alundra Blayze and Bull Nakano for pudding matches, they were hiring The Kat and Terri Runnels, two people whose only connection to the wrestling business was "I f*** a guy who does this!" They weren't hiring models and actresses to put on 5 star classics, they hired them to show their tits to a sex crazed 18-24 year old demographic growing up in the late-90s, when you could get away with almost anything. They took these women, with absolutely NO reason or business being in wrestling and made them STARS. Sable never did a single thing more impressive than her bra size, and yet she is considered a LEGEND in the business. They have literally tried to ignore her popularity and presence in the Attitude Era and simply can't. And as for stuff like "Well, we wanted to use weapons and blah blah blah..." Honestly, tell me: Would you want Torrie Wilson swinging weapons at Stacy Keibler? Those 2 could barely walk across the ring, let alone perform wrestling moves, and now they wanna swing shit at each other? That wasn't holding anybody back, that was saving everyone from injury. But still, these women became wealthy, household names in a business most of them couldn't perform the most basic of tasks in. If that's being held back, sign me up. Yes, it was wrong and did damage to the entire concept of women's wrestling that we are just now seeing repaired. It was the gratuitous use of women to boost ratings and draw attention to their product, and that's not what it should have been. I'm not defending ANY of this. It was bad, it was wrong. But it was NOT holding anyone back from what they were hired to do or what were realistically capable of doing in the business.
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Post by A Platypus Rave is Correct on Feb 24, 2019 16:57:10 GMT -5
Other than Wendy Richter, no one really cared in the 80's. Velvet McIntyre vs. Sherri Martel didn't exactly sell out any houses. After Richter left the company, the fans wanted zero to do with women wrestling, only Sherri showing a leg and Liz being Liz. I remember watching Rockin Robin vs. Judy Martin during a Royal Rumble PPV, for the title, and you could hear a pin drop. It was there, and Japan had a huge women's division, but not here. It wasn't what American fans wanted. 90's was a different animal. People wanted sex in everything. Some of the most popular movies during that era had nudity in them, sex was all over music outside of grunge, although some of the ladies bands had a sex angle going on (L7, Lita Ford) Wrestling was no exception. Unless you got subscriptions to WOW Magazine and had tapes from Japan, sex in wrestling is all you saw. They tried in WWF with Alundra Blayze and Bull Nakano, and it sold for a minute. The fans cared for Sunny, not Akira Hokato or Monster Ripper. WCW thought they had something in Madusa when she threw the title in the garbage, but it died rather quickly. They cared for her when she was in a tiny bikini, and needed Missy Hyatts innuendos.. WWF had some real wrestlers out there, but no one wanted to watch a Jackie Moore vs. Ivory title match. They wanted Debra and Sable. Again, the company tried, but no one was buying. 2000's was different. Trish dropped the TNA gimmick and Lita was coming around. Unless you were a smark, and at that time there wasn't as many as there are now, Gail Kim was a filler till Torrie Wilson and Dawn Marie wrestled around in garter belts and stockings for the thousandth time. And even still, Trish's biggest WWF moment happened during angle where she was being stalked by a psycho lesbian-type who grabbed her lady parts during their big blowoff and licked her fingers. Lita was popular, but that was about it, although I suspect it was because we could see her underpants, as well as her ability in the ring. But it was starting to happen. 2010 was of course the Divas Division, and yes, Johnny Aces decisions were crappy. But who were the most popular women of that time? Candice Michelle, Kelly Kelly and the Bellas. Beth Phoenix was there, and for a moment seemed to turn it around, but the fans really didn't care. She wasn't sexy in the "Hollywood" sense. She was strong like Chyna, but she wasn't taking her clothes of for Playboy, so she was there....but not THERE. Paige is right. At times, the opportunity was there, but the fans rejected it. They wanted puppies when Molly Holly was giving them technical mat based wrestling. They wanted Legs when Jazz was showing the world what a badass really was. They wanted Chyna in Playboy, when Chyna was winning the womens title at Wrestlemania. It took people like her and the Bellas learning to actually wrestle, as well as NXT taking a shot at it in the early days. She's 100 percent right here. I get there has to be an outrage over the guy at the top, but he's about to let two or three women take the top spot at the biggest show of the year. Already he's let them go on last at a few PPVs, gave them a Royal Rumble (which some on theses boards are already rejecting only after 2 tries) Why is he doing this? Because the fans have changed. It's what we want. So he's delivering. when molly was a face with the original Crash run and with the Hurricane she was over they could have pushed for more wrestling there. They booed her because she was treated as a heel when talking about not being simply sex objects. "That's the fans rejecting that story!" Which is not true either. As seen with CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, Chris Jericho, Mick Foley, the original Muhammad Hassan Character and heels throughout the ages. It's not so much what you say it's how you say it. Molly was saying it was a rabid Feminist Zealot who went after anyone who thought a woman was sexy was in the wrong. Ignoring that. The Jazz being a badas/Molly technical wrestling stuff... was still only given about 5 mintues worth of time. "it wasn't until NXT" like you said... because ... it wasn't until NXT that the WWE even pretended to care about women's wrestling. The WwE for the past 20 years has had 5-6 hours of prime television (not counting things like Main Event and Superstars) a WEEK to fill. They could have easily sectioned off 60 minutes of that time to build a division people cared about. They didn't. They didn't even make an attempt to.
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Woo
Hank Scorpio
Posts: 5,317
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Post by Woo on Feb 24, 2019 17:23:06 GMT -5
That's just flat out but true. Go back in time to 2005 and hire Rain, Lacey, MsChif, Daizee Haze, Cheerleader Melissa, Sarah Stock, Becky Lynch and Nikki Roxx. All of them far more talented than what they had. They could have hired them and done a Divas revolution a decade earlier. Haze could have been a proto-Bayley, Lacey and Rain could have easily filled the beautiful bitchy girl hell gimmicks they love so much and we're far superior to LayCool and the Bella Twins. MsChif could have gotten over just like Lita. The gimmick is a licence to print money and of you want more women with unique look then you hire Awesome Kong in the mid 00's. You want to appeal to the latina crowd then hire Mercedes Martinez, you want the best all round female in the US then Sara Del Rey is right there and Madison Eagles is incredible. Later on you have Portia Perez who can wrestle, who can commentate, who can be a booker and who can talk circles around everyone and is a great magnet and you don't hire her? Nicole Matthews can do everything too and she has the look, yet they don't hire her either. So no, they could have hired visually appealing talented women fifteen years ago. I gave full credit to Ronda Rousey opening up the door for women by showing they could draw money in a similar environment. And as sexist as it may sound, you skipped over the "roster full," statement by pointing to two women with the "beautiful and bitchy comment." You use a lot of hypotheticals about who could have done what (MsChif getting over like Lita) but the reality none of the people you listed have ever sold out a venue on American soil that held 500 people. Could they have? Sure maybe. But you're doing a hell of a lot of assuming that they could have come close to building the interest that Charotte Flair and Sasha Banks did. What do you mean by roster full? My first list was full of beautiful women. You want them all to be bitchy mean girl types? Because you could change their gimmicks if that's the issue. My point was that they could have easily stacked the entire roster full of women that were both beautiful and could actually wrestle, but they didn't want to. You too are using hypothetical statements too. Yes the women didn't sell out large arenas because they worked on the indies. Are you telling me that Kelly Kelly, Joy Giovani and Jackie Gayda could have done so? How many women have sold out arenas? The four horsewomen got over because they could wrestle well. Lacey, Haze, Sara Del Rey and Becky Lynch could have done the same thing in 2005. The only reason we have to speak in hypotheticals is because the WWE didn't even try.
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Post by Jokaine on Feb 24, 2019 17:40:16 GMT -5
I gave full credit to Ronda Rousey opening up the door for women by showing they could draw money in a similar environment. And as sexist as it may sound, you skipped over the "roster full," statement by pointing to two women with the "beautiful and bitchy comment." You use a lot of hypotheticals about who could have done what (MsChif getting over like Lita) but the reality none of the people you listed have ever sold out a venue on American soil that held 500 people. Could they have? Sure maybe. But you're doing a hell of a lot of assuming that they could have come close to building the interest that Charotte Flair and Sasha Banks did. What do you mean by roster full? My first list was full of beautiful women. You want them all to be bitchy mean girl types? Because you could change their gimmicks if that's the issue. My point was that they could have easily stacked the entire roster full of women that were both beautiful and could actually wrestle, but they didn't want to. You too are using hypothetical statements too. Yes the women didn't sell out large arenas because they worked on the indies. Are you telling me that Kelly Kelly, Joy Giovani and Jackie Gayda could have done so? How many women have sold out arenas? The four horsewomen got over because they could wrestle well. Lacey, Haze, Sara Del Rey and Becky Lynch could have done the same thing in 2005. The only reason we have to speak in hypotheticals is because the WWE didn't even try. I'm not using hypotheticals when I say that celebrating cracking 3 figures of attendance in a venue that has a building record of 435 cannot be considered a draw. That backs up the idea that there was no sizable market for serious women's wrestling in 2005. You feel that Sara Del Ray and Becky Lynch could have done in 2005 what Lynch is doing now with the world's most recognizable female athlete and a woman with the last name of Flair. I'm saying there's literally nothing to support that, in the world of wrestling or sports. Also, let me be clear. In saying Paige is right with her assessment I'm in no way saying I agree with the assessment. I think it is horrible that Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes had to go overseas to get paid because the WNBA couldn't provide a large enough income. I think its terrible that Ryan Lochte has made more money than Katie Lidecky. I can go on and on, but what I can't do is blame WWE for a line of thinking that has and to a good extent still does permeate American athletic culture.
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Woo
Hank Scorpio
Posts: 5,317
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Post by Woo on Feb 24, 2019 17:52:07 GMT -5
What do you mean by roster full? My first list was full of beautiful women. You want them all to be bitchy mean girl types? Because you could change their gimmicks if that's the issue. My point was that they could have easily stacked the entire roster full of women that were both beautiful and could actually wrestle, but they didn't want to. You too are using hypothetical statements too. Yes the women didn't sell out large arenas because they worked on the indies. Are you telling me that Kelly Kelly, Joy Giovani and Jackie Gayda could have done so? How many women have sold out arenas? The four horsewomen got over because they could wrestle well. Lacey, Haze, Sara Del Rey and Becky Lynch could have done the same thing in 2005. The only reason we have to speak in hypotheticals is because the WWE didn't even try. I'm not using hypotheticals when I say that celebrating cracking 3 figures of attendance in a venue that has a building record of 435 cannot be considered a draw. That backs up the idea that there was no sizable market for serious women's wrestling in 2005. You feel that Sara Del Ray and Becky Lynch could have done in 2005 what Lynch is doing now with the world's most recognizable female athlete and a woman with the last name of Flair. I'm saying there's literally nothing to support that, in the world of wrestling or sports. Also, let me be clear. In saying Paige is right with her assessment I'm in no way saying I agree with the assessment. I think it is horrible that Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes had to go overseas to get paid because the WNBA couldn't provide a large enough income. I think its terrible that Ryan Lochte has made more money than Katie Lidecky. I can go on and on, but what I can't do is blame WWE for a line of thinking that has and to a good extent still does permeate American athletic culture. Every big name wrestler in the 80's and 90's from Mick Foley to Steve Austin to Chris Jericho to Lita toiled away on indy shows in front of empty seats. The difference is that the big name companies then came calling. Becky Lynch herself wrestled in venues that weren't sold out and you would have written her off with that logic. Richochet wrestled in an empty venue at early Lucha Underground tapings and AJ Styles couldn't help TNA house shows sell out. Again Kelly Kelly and Shaniqua couldn't have sold out venues either, so since it doesn't matter why not hire good workers? Nobody in 2005 was asking for the women to be THE draw. They didn't need to main event. They just needed to be treated better. Becky got to be this over even before the Roussey feud so I don't see why she couldn't have been a bigger star earlier at all had the WWE had taken females seriously back then and hired her earlier and her injury hadn't happened. Charlotte is over regardless of her name. Yes her surname got her foot in the door but that didn't help Axel or Tamina. She got over with good booking and good wrestling. AJ Lee was their biggest female star for a while and again she wrestled in front of empty seats on indie shows. So why couldn't a Rain, a Haze, a MsChif or a Perez be that popular? And even if they aren't then at least the wrestling is better right?
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Post by Feargus McReddit on Feb 24, 2019 18:25:08 GMT -5
The “Draw” argument is f***ing weird to me. Why?
Yes, SHIMMER shows don’t draw more than 500 people and they usually don’t do as many shows as other indies but...well, most of that talent are now under WWE contracts and are seen by more people.
Sasha Banks, Bayley, Becky Lynch, Asuka, Io Shirai, Kairi Sane, Ruby Riot, Candice LaRae etc didn’t break records for women’s wrestling but at least a good chunk of them in WWE are now widely known to the fan base because, well, WWE is seen by more people.
By that logic, WWE shouldn’t have seen the potential in Jon Moxley and Tyler Black because they didn’t break records in CZW and ROH. Yet at one point they were in the most over stable in the company. Go figure.
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Post by Kevin Hamilton on Feb 24, 2019 18:47:21 GMT -5
I think it is messed up Paige got all this heat for this comment. When the people said they wanted women’s wrestling, women’s wrestling is what they got. It is going to main event Mania this year. There was no market place for it, people really didn’t want it. She got heat cuz it's just a ludicrous comment. If you book anything: women, tag teams, cruisers, whatever as an afterthought and if it doesn't matter people aren't going to care. If you market something like garbage, then yeah there isn't gonna be people clamoring for it. That's solely on the company. It's the same sorta thinking as the whole 'vanilla midgets' thing in the late 90s. Meanwhile if you present these guys like stars, well then hell's bell's AJ and D Bry et al are popular as can be. It's a work, all this stuff is as credible and marketable as you book it.
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Post by Jokaine on Feb 24, 2019 20:18:45 GMT -5
I think it is messed up Paige got all this heat for this comment. When the people said they wanted women’s wrestling, women’s wrestling is what they got. It is going to main event Mania this year. There was no market place for it, people really didn’t want it. She got heat cuz it's just a ludicrous comment. If you book anything: women, tag teams, cruisers, whatever as an afterthought and if it doesn't matter people aren't going to care. If you market something like garbage, then yeah there isn't gonna be people clamoring for it. That's solely on the company. It's the same sorta thinking as the whole 'vanilla midgets' thing in the late 90s. Meanwhile if you present these guys like stars, well then hell's bell's AJ and D Bry et al are popular as can be. It's a work, all this stuff is as credible and marketable as you book it. I agree with the idea that booking can hurt or help something, but the buying public will also dictate the emphasis something receives. If the WNBA couldn't make Diana Turasi, Chamique Holdsclaw or Candace Williams a household name in the mid-00s and if Marion Jones couldn't rack more money than Michael Johnson in the late 90s and if Ana Kournikova was the highest-earning women's tennis player in the early-00s, it's hard for me to believe there was a high demand for serious wrestling matches featuring MsChif and Cheerleader Melissa at the same time. Again, I'm not saying it's right or fair, but that was the time and it wasn't until the past few years that a market was really created for that. Also, part of that market creation is the actual people who are out there performing. It's unfair and disrespectful to those women that you could have just plugged anyone into those spots over the past 20 years and it would have worked the same.
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Post by Kevin Hamilton on Feb 24, 2019 20:40:49 GMT -5
You're comparing actual sports to a work though. It's not the same thing. I get what you're saying about audiences for real sports not craving the same things such as WNBA etc back then. It'd be silly for me to argue that, which is why I'm not.
But wrestling isn't real. You can create whatever narrative you want. Besides, your WNBA comparison doesn't fit that well given that that league was STILL presented like a competent product. The comparison for women's wrestling in the 90s wouldn't be NBA vs WNBA or men's/women's tennis, it'd be NFL vs Lingerie Football League or something like that.
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Woo
Hank Scorpio
Posts: 5,317
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Post by Woo on Feb 24, 2019 20:43:41 GMT -5
She got heat cuz it's just a ludicrous comment. If you book anything: women, tag teams, cruisers, whatever as an afterthought and if it doesn't matter people aren't going to care. If you market something like garbage, then yeah there isn't gonna be people clamoring for it. That's solely on the company. It's the same sorta thinking as the whole 'vanilla midgets' thing in the late 90s. Meanwhile if you present these guys like stars, well then hell's bell's AJ and D Bry et al are popular as can be. It's a work, all this stuff is as credible and marketable as you book it. I agree with the idea that booking can hurt or help something, but the buying public will also dictate the emphasis something receives. If the WNBA couldn't make Diana Turasi, Chamique Holdsclaw or Candace Williams a household name in the mid-00s and if Marion Jones couldn't rack more money than Michael Johnson in the late 90s and if Ana Kournikova was the highest-earning women's tennis player in the early-00s, it's hard for me to believe there was a high demand for serious wrestling matches featuring MsChif and Cheerleader Melissa at the same time. Again, I'm not saying it's right or fair, but that was the time and it wasn't until the past few years that a market was really created for that. Also, part of that market creation is the actual people who are out there performing. It's unfair and disrespectful to those women that you could have just plugged anyone into those spots over the past 20 years and it would have worked the same. But your argument falls apart when you look back at the times the WWE actually treated women's wrestling seriously (1985, 1988, 1994-1995 and today) it was very popular with fans. And if I'm being disrespectful to the Torrie Wilsons or Amy Webber by saying anybody could have done that job then I guess I am. Shimmer was never trying to sell out stadiums. Their goal was to get women's wrestling taken seriously and look what they achieved. You could look at the WWE's light heavyweight division in 1998 and say that there is no interest there. But then look what WCW did with their cruiserweights. The WWE could have made people care about women's wrestlers any time.
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EyeofTyr
Hank Scorpio
Strange and Mystical
Posts: 5,744
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Post by EyeofTyr on Feb 24, 2019 21:15:46 GMT -5
it also ignores things like Shimmer has been a successful wrestling company in America since 2005. TNA's Knockouts for the short amount of time they were taken seriously were literally the highest rated segments on their shows. CHIKARA and other big indy feds treated women seriously and in some cases flat out had integrated rosters pretty much since inception. It comes down to what I said earlier... until recently the WWE didn't treat the women like they mattered so the audience acted like they didn't matter. It's what happened to things like the Mid/lower/cruiserweight divisions in the WWE too. If 20 years ago the WWE decided they would treat the women seriously the crowd would have come around too. Shimmer has averaged 7.5 cards a year since its inception. I found attendance from shows 3 years into their existence showing 80 people. The largest count I found for my show at the venue that operate in was 435 (which was not for a Shimmer show, by the way). TNA did get hot for a moment with the Kong-Kim feud. That was two people, however, not an entire division. That's been my point this whole time. Once WWE had a division of marketable, talented women they pushed them. To call Chikara a big indy is ridiculous. There are a few major indies in the United States and Chikara is most certainly not among them. To call modern CHIKARA a big indy? It's maybe a stretch. It's a well known indy certainly. But that's partially because it was a big indy and doing numbers comparable to the biggest indies out there for several years during its existence. And during those years? Women's wrestling was treated seriously and given a platform, including having those women wrestle men in fair, evenly booked matches. Some of their most popular characters have been played by ladies. To dismiss CHIKARA is being woefully ignorant about what the company once was. You don't dismiss ECW entirely just because it has ceased to exist or can say CZW or Mid-South were never large indies in their primes just because they are what they are now.
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Woo
Hank Scorpio
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Post by Woo on Feb 24, 2019 21:24:10 GMT -5
it also ignores things like Shimmer has been a successful wrestling company in America since 2005. TNA's Knockouts for the short amount of time they were taken seriously were literally the highest rated segments on their shows. CHIKARA and other big indy feds treated women seriously and in some cases flat out had integrated rosters pretty much since inception. It comes down to what I said earlier... until recently the WWE didn't treat the women like they mattered so the audience acted like they didn't matter. It's what happened to things like the Mid/lower/cruiserweight divisions in the WWE too. If 20 years ago the WWE decided they would treat the women seriously the crowd would have come around too. Shimmer has averaged 7.5 cards a year since its inception. I found attendance from shows 3 years into their existence showing 80 people. The largest count I found for my show at the venue that operate in was 435 (which was not for a Shimmer show, by the way). TNA did get hot for a moment with the Kong-Kim feud. That was two people, however, not an entire division. That's been my point this whole time. Once WWE had a division of marketable, talented women they pushed them. To call Chikara a big indy is ridiculous. There are a few major indies in the United States and Chikara is most certainly not among them. Your stats about Shimmer attendences are again completely wrong. They do two tapings a year plus a bonus one around Wrestlemania season and almost always sold out the Eagles Club from Volumes 22 onwards, if not earlier. I know, I went there myself during a sold out show. Asuka was there too in that small venue, is she not a draw?
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Post by Jokaine on Feb 24, 2019 21:33:03 GMT -5
Shimmer has averaged 7.5 cards a year since its inception. I found attendance from shows 3 years into their existence showing 80 people. The largest count I found for my show at the venue that operate in was 435 (which was not for a Shimmer show, by the way). TNA did get hot for a moment with the Kong-Kim feud. That was two people, however, not an entire division. That's been my point this whole time. Once WWE had a division of marketable, talented women they pushed them. To call Chikara a big indy is ridiculous. There are a few major indies in the United States and Chikara is most certainly not among them. Your stats about Shimmer attendences are again completely wrong. They do two tapings a year plus a bonus one around Wrestlemania season and almost always sold out the Eagles Club from Volumes 22 onwards, if not earlier. I know, I went there myself during a sold out show. Asuka was there too in that small venue, is she not a draw? If I'm wrong, I apologize but the largest number I found in looking up the venue was 435. What is the average attendance for a Shimmer show? And, yes Asuka certainly seems to be a draw in 2017-2019. 10 years ago? She most likely would have been whatted out of just about any arena WWE allowed her to cut a promo in.
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Woo
Hank Scorpio
Posts: 5,317
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Post by Woo on Feb 24, 2019 21:49:37 GMT -5
Your stats about Shimmer attendences are again completely wrong. They do two tapings a year plus a bonus one around Wrestlemania season and almost always sold out the Eagles Club from Volumes 22 onwards, if not earlier. I know, I went there myself during a sold out show. Asuka was there too in that small venue, is she not a draw? If I'm wrong, I apologize but the largest number I found in looking up the venue was 435. What is the average attendance for a Shimmer show? And, yes Asuka certainly seems to be a draw in 2017-2019. 10 years ago? She most likely would have been whatted out of just about any arena WWE allowed her to cut a promo in. They used to sell out the Eagles Club quite regularly. This in part was because they only taped twice a year and fans would fly in to Chicago to see it. Shimmer 9 and 10 do seem to have more people in attendence than some of the sold out shows however so I think the venue must have had an issue over the maximum capacity allowed such rings a bell with me. I'm not too up to date with them. I've not followed Shimmer since around Shimmer 80 and I know they moved out of the Eagles Club a few times since then. Asuka if pushed the same in 2012 could have made in then too in my opinion. It's all about presentation.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Feb 24, 2019 22:17:52 GMT -5
An entire Twitter thread about women of the Divas era and current being held back. Even ones who were hired not for their wrestling ability, they wanted to do more than what they were allowed to do. Told not to do anything that made the men look bad, or not to look too real, or hey your 15 minute match is now 30 seconds. So no, they were absolutely held back by WWE. Not to mention, just the act of WWE not taking women's wrestling seriously is an act of holding back the women. When you present an entire generation of fans with a product that says that women only matter if they're taking their clothes off, you are creating a mindset in those fans that takes so very long to undo. And even when you get good to great wrestlers you are giving them little time to have anything resembling a quality match. The entire mindset of booking for the women in that time period was detrimental to women's wrestling in America as a whole. There's not a single thing listed in there that has not happened to men, except the whole "this or that was TOO good", which sounds like complete horseshit and would be resoundingly laughed at if said by a man. And even then, there are stories of guys being berated for going out and being too good and making the rest of the guys look weak. Look, I'm not saying that ANY of what I said in my original post is RIGHT. I'm simply saying that it's reality. I find the way they used women for a long time as reprehensible as the next guy. But you're confusing "wrong" and "bad" with "held back". In order to hold someone back, you have to prevent them from being used to their full potential, or not allowing them to use their full potential. The fact is, they used basically every one of the women they had to their full potential, actually FAR MORE than their full potential in most cases, because many of them had basically no potential pertaining to the wrestling business anyway. They weren't hiring Alundra Blayze and Bull Nakano for pudding matches, they were hiring The Kat and Terri Runnels, two people whose only connection to the wrestling business was "I f*** a guy who does this!" They weren't hiring models and actresses to put on 5 star classics, they hired them to show their tits to a sex crazed 18-24 year old demographic growing up in the late-90s, when you could get away with almost anything. They took these women, with absolutely NO reason or business being in wrestling and made them STARS. Sable never did a single thing more impressive than her bra size, and yet she is considered a LEGEND in the business. They have literally tried to ignore her popularity and presence in the Attitude Era and simply can't. And as for stuff like "Well, we wanted to use weapons and blah blah blah..." Honestly, tell me: Would you want Torrie Wilson swinging weapons at Stacy Keibler? Those 2 could barely walk across the ring, let alone perform wrestling moves, and now they wanna swing shit at each other? That wasn't holding anybody back, that was saving everyone from injury. But still, these women became wealthy, household names in a business most of them couldn't perform the most basic of tasks in. If that's being held back, sign me up. Yes, it was wrong and did damage to the entire concept of women's wrestling that we are just now seeing repaired. It was the gratuitous use of women to boost ratings and draw attention to their product, and that's not what it should have been. I'm not defending ANY of this. It was bad, it was wrong. But it was NOT holding anyone back from what they were hired to do or what were realistically capable of doing in the business. I feel like we're discussing two different things in regards to women being held back. I'm not arguing about making money or becoming popular at an individual level and I would say to a certain extent I agree with your point in that regard. I'm talking about women's wrestling in general being treated as an afterthought by the entire company, the negative effects of that treatment, and how that has in general held women's wrestling in America back. There were talented (wrestling-wise) women back then and a lot were not hired by the company, and the ones that were hired were not afforded the same opportunities to showcase their talent as the men. It was damaging to the product as a whole and WWE has a lot of fault in that treatment. I will contend that a woman hired for her looks who then wanted to train to become at the very least a competent wrestler and was denied, was also held back however. Just become someone is hired for their looks does not mean that is the only thing they desire out of a job. If they try and fail, fair enough, but they should at least be allowed to try.
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