Women’s wrestling has been through many iterations—see the Attitude era and the Divas era. Sunday brings the next chapter, with Evolution 2, World Wrestling Entertainment’s second all-women wrestling event.
Evolution 2, coming seven years after the first installment in 2018, marks another important anniversary in the world of wrestling. Ten years ago, the women’s wrestling evolution ostensibly began, when Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, and Sasha Banks made their debuts on WWE’s flagship program Raw. A decade since they stepped in the ring and set off a new era in the industry, women’s wrestling has undertaken a bumpy journey, gaining momentum but at a spasmodic pace.
The making of Evolution
“We hear you. Keep watching,” the disgraced former WWE chairman Vince McMahon posted on X, formerly Twitter, in early 2015. McMahon was responding to the viral hashtag, #GiveDivasAChance, which took off when wrestling fans began begging for women wrestlers to get more airplay after a women’s tag team match on an episode of WWE’s flagship program, Raw, lasted only 30 seconds.
Until 2016, “Divas” is what WWE’s female wrestlers were called instead of, you know, just wrestlers, like their male counterparts. The moniker became a marketing tool to at once appeal to the growing audience of young girls and women, what with the sparkly pink butterfly championship the Divas got to wrestle for, and their hyper-sexualized appearance catered to the male demographic that has traditionally watched professional wrestling. Their matches were short, like the 30-second tag team match in 2015, and consisted mostly of hair pulling and open-handed slaps. (And don’t forget the bra and panties matches!)
It wasn’t always like this, however, with women like the controversial Fabulous Moolah and Mildred Burke, subject of the recent film Queen of the Ring, paving the way in the mid-20th century, while The Jumping Bomb Angles and Wendi Richter who, accompanied by Cyndi Lauper,…
