Stephanie McMahon was interviewed on The Bump this week as part of “Women’s Evolution Week”. McMahon did not announce another all-women Evolution pay-per-view, but she did discuss how it’s common now for women to wrestle in main events on WWE television:
“It is a regular thing for our women to be the main event across all of our programming, and that’s exactly as it should be. It’s not positioning women just because they’re women. It’s because they deserve that spot. It’s because they’re the best athletes, the best storylines, with the most engaged fanbase at that time for them to be the main event. It’s the representation of our women, it’s just where they should be.
At WrestleMania last year at MetLife stadium, I actually pulled Charlotte and Becky and Ronda aside, and I was overcome with emotion. Because when I was a little girl, and I would sit and watch WrestleMania, the women were certainly nowhere near the main event. For my little girls, who are gonna be sitting in the front row later that night, for them to be able to see women competing at the main event of WrestleMania, in a building by the way, which six years before when we had WrestleMania, the only women’s match that was on the card was cut for time. And now here they are six years later competing in the main event, because that’s just the way it is, because that’s just the way it should be...I got really choked up and I thanked them.”
Her example comparing WrestleMania 35 in 2019 to WrestleMania 29 in 2013 does show a significant change in how women’s wrestling is presented in WWE. But you don’t even have to go back that far to see the evidence. Women wrestled in the main event of the three most recent episodes of Raw leading into Extreme Rules 2020, and that’s without Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, or Ronda Rousey in the mix. Asuka and Sasha Banks have the most interesting championship program in WWE right now, and that’s been reflected in their main event positioning during this time.
As far as pay-per-view is concerned, the women’s division also wrestled in the main event of Money in the Bank 2020, Elimination Chamber 2020, and TLC 2019. It’s worth noting that none of these matches were of the 1 vs. 1 variety, and that’s a specific match type for women that is still largely missing from WWE’s pay-per-view main events.
Have you become accustomed to women wrestling in the main event of Raw, SmackDown, and pay-per-view in WWE?