When WWE Evolution was announced, I was excited. A lot of people were. This really did feel like the culmination of something that started with Emma and Paige and the Four Horsewomen in NXT. Sure, Stephanie McMahon was in the ring making herself the center of attention, but how else were they going to announce a women-only PPV?
The thing is, I’ve been frustrated for a while (at least since the signings that came with the first Mae Young Classic) that WWE is building this giant pool of female talent, but giving them nowhere to go. Sure, they’ve progressed to sometimes having two or even three women’s segments on Raw and SmackDown, but that’s not a lot when you have such a full division. There’s the top of the women’s card (Nikki B, Ronda, Becky, Charlotte, Alexa), then there are the midcarders who could easily be at the top and have been before (Asuka, Naomi, Bayley, Sasha), plus the sort of permanent undercard (Mickie, Foxy, Dana, etc), and then the promising newer women who are still waiting their turn (Ember, Riott Squad, IIconics, etc). Underneath that are the women at the top of NXT (Shayna, Kairi, Nikki C) who are waiting to get called up, and then all the other NXT women who are still working toward getting to the top of that division. That’s a vast amount of talented women that you’re trying to eventually channel onto Raw or Smackdown, but you’re not making any room for them there.
So when I found out about the women’s PPV, I was excited not just for the show itself, but for the build-up. Knowing how WWE works, I figured they’d have to establish multiple feuds and storylines across the brands to make meaningful matches for Evolution. That’s literally how wrestling has worked for decades. You have a PPV coming up, so you tell a bunch of stories about why the people on that PPV want to fight each other, and then you enjoy it when they do.
So imagine my surprise when WWE just decided not to do any of that. Sure, they built the Raw Women’s Championship feud, featuring the still-pretty-new Ronda Rousey and the newly returned Bella Twins, and then they kept the existing feuds going for the Smackdown and NXT women’s titles. After that we’ve got two meaningless tag matches, one of which features returning legends, and the other seems to mostly exist to avoid the heat of putting Nattie Niedhart or any of the NXT Horsewomen into the Battle Royale. Because yes, after the MYC Finals, the only other match is a Battle Royal, featuring multiple former champions and other women who could have carried matches of their own.
The truth is that I will probably enjoy all of these matches, including the Battle Royal. I know the wrestlers are going to give it their all, and I know that they know that if anyone’s going to be impressed by this PPV, and if there’s going to be a chance of another (perhaps better) Evolution in 2019, it’s on them to make a mark. I fully expect them to rise to this occasion. However, that doesn’t mean the PPV couldn’t be better if it were booked well, and it certainly doesn’t mean I’m letting WWE off the hook for booking it badly.
I don’t want to make this about fantasy booking, but it’s easy to point out some missed opportunities. They could have opened the show with Bayley and Sasha versus the Riott Squad back to back with Asuka and Naomi versus the Iconics, and then have the two winning teams fight later on the card for the WWE Women’s Tag Team Belts. They could have had Nia Jax versus Ember Moon for Number One Contendership on Raw, and Carmella versus Sonya Deville for the same thing on Smackdown. They could do all of this and more, and still have a Battle Royale with more space in it for legends and upcoming NXT stars.
Unfortunately, building those matches would have taken TV time away from the Sad Dad returns of DX and the Brothers of Destruction, and the build to a totally meaningless “World Cup” tournament that exists purely for the pleasure of a murderous autocratic Saudi Arabian regime. It’s bad enough that WWE can’t be bothered to properly build their women’s PPV, but it’s even more insulting that they’re using that time instead to build to a PPV that shouldn’t even be happening, at which women aren’t even allowed to perform.
Here’s another thing about Crown Jewel: I have friends who love wrestling, who’ve been watching WWE avidly since this whole “Women’s Revolution” thing got started, who are planning to boycott the company after this weekend. They want no part of Crown Jewel, but they’re sticking around long enough to support the women whose work has meant so much to them. It breaks my heart that this half-assed card is the last PPV those friends will see, at least for a while. WWE pretending to care about their female superstars without doing a thing to get them over may seem like a fitting note to go out on, but it’s certainly an unfortunate one.
Does anybody remember Elimination Chamber 2017? It was a Smackdown-branded show, and it featured three women’s matches: Nikki versus Natalya, Becky versus Mickie, and Naomi versus Alexa for the Belt (which Naomi won). That was more women’s solo matches than men’s on that card, and it’s also more Main Roster solo matches than Evolution has. At the time, it felt like a more important step in the evolution of women’s wrestling in WWE than Evolution does now, and what I wrote for my job at the time on the Friday before that show was vastly different from what I’m writing here, today. My excitement about that Elimination Chamber was in spite of (but in retrospect also because of) WWE’s lack of fanfare. That show wasn’t treated like a big momentous step or anything, it just made it possible to imagine a future where women get multiple matches on a PPV, and storylines to go with each of them. Looking back from almost two years later, it was a false promise. It never became the norm, and the combination of WWE’s disinterest in Evolution and their interest in working with Saudi Arabia makes their attitude toward women look as bad as it has in a couple of years.
Even with all the great things they’ve done, like the Mae Young Classic and the Women’s Royal Rumble, it still feels like WWE is missing a step when it comes to treating women as equal. Actually, we’ve never even gotten close to equal; it feels more like they’re still struggling just to treat women like valid wrestlers at all. I suspect this struggle reflects differing attitudes backstage, but I’m not going to use this space to speculate about who’s on what side. They employ so many women these days who are both amazing wrestlers and hugely talented all-around performers. The fans know it too— Becky Lynch, performing as a heel no less, is one of the most over wrestlers WWE has right now. If all of these women giving it their all and getting so much love from fans can’t convince the backstage powers at WWE that women’s wrestling is worth spending time on, I genuinely don’t know what can.
So I’m going to watch WWE Evolution, and I’m going to skip Crown Jewel, and then we’ll see what happens. There are certainly things to look forward to with the women: Becky Lynch’s ongoing story, the rise of Bianca Belair, the possibility of Ember Moon getting a push, the question of what Nikki Cross does next. There might even be Tag Belts eventually; that buzz isn’t going away. But as a women’s wrestling fan right at this moment, as I contemplate this weekend and next weekend and where it all leads, I don’t feel good about women’s wrestling in WWE. In fact, I feel the worst I have in a while.
