Ahead of All Elite Wrestling‘s Full Gear pay-per-view this Saturday, AEW EVP and World Championship challenger Cody answered questions from the media on a conference call. Early in the call, he mentioned that he wants AEW’s men’s and women’s world singles titles and tag titles are, “respected at the same level.”
After referencing this comment, the Smark to Death podcast asked if fans could expect to see more of AEW’s women’s roster, which currently gets one match per week on Dynamite, in the future. Cody replied:
“Absolutely. Not only plans to have more women’s representation on Dynamite, but not just in match form, in VTR, in interview, in vignette form.
“One thing that’s kind of – I wouldn’t say has been difficult, but has been an honest element of what we’re doing is we have a lot of foreign talent. And foreign talent, to do it properly, requires a work visa and those, in this political climate, are rather difficult to get. And we’ve been great – Chris Harrington and Christopher Daniels have been outstanding about procuring and making sure that our Joshi females, making sure people like Shanna from Portugal, making sure they all get in properly, legally. And that’s been something that’s been kind of difficult in terms of the representation [of the women’s division in AEW programming] because we have a very international women’s division.
“Which, I don’t know if you guys know and I’m going on a bit of a detour here, but Emi [Sakura] and Riho, their match this Saturday may be the one I’m looking forward to the most. The teacher vs. student aspect of it and what Kenny Omega is doing and trying to do with the women’s division is really something that deserves praise. He’s really trying to do something different, and this is a merit-based, sport-centric, wrestling show, so it’s different than perhaps wrestling you’ve seen out there… And Riho, I think we’ve all fallen in love with her and this audience has fallen in love with her. We had a Southern-based crowd chanting ‘This is awesome!’ for two women who they had definitely never seen before this past week in Charlotte and that’s definitely a great indicator.
“But to answer your question, for sure. The women’s representation will definitely uptick, I would say probably immediately coming out of Full Gear.”
So for those wondering why there was so little women’s wrestling on AEW programming and if there will be more in the future, there’s an answer from an Executive Vice President. Other future developments Cody mentioned on this call were the establishment of a secondary men’s title and the release of top five rankings for each division.
