Women’s wrestling has experienced highs and lows, particularly during the Attitude and Divas eras. This Sunday marks a new milestone with Evolution 2, WWE’s second all-women’s event.
Evolution 2, arriving seven years after the inaugural event in 2018, also commemorates a decade since Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, and Sasha Banks debuted on Raw, WWE’s main program. Since their debut, women’s wrestling has advanced, though inconsistently.
The making of Evolution
In response to the viral hashtag #GiveDivasAChance in early 2015, Vince McMahon, then WWE chairman, posted on X (formerly Twitter), “We hear you. Keep watching.” The hashtag emerged after a women’s tag team match on Raw lasted only 30 seconds, prompting fans to demand more screen time for female wrestlers.
Until 2016, WWE referred to its female wrestlers as “Divas” instead of simply “wrestlers,” a marketing strategy aimed at young girls and women. The Divas wrestled for a sparkly pink butterfly championship and were often hyper-sexualized to appeal to the traditional male audience. Their matches, like the aforementioned 30-second tag team match, were brief and often involved hair pulling and open-handed slaps, not to mention bra and panties matches.
However, women like Fabulous Moolah and Mildred Burke (featured in the film) previously paved the way in the mid-20th century, followed by The Jumping Bomb Angles and Wendi Richter (alongside Cyndi Lauper) who helped launch the Rock ‘n’ Wrestling Connection in the ’80s. Joanie “Chyna” Laurer, Trish Stratus, and Lita demonstrated that women in wrestling could be both sexy and tough during the late 1990s and early 2000s “Attitude Era,” before the Divas championship in 2008 led to a decline in wrestling quality for nearly a decade.
Things began to change around the time of #GiveDivasAChance. A shift started in the indie scene and spread to NXT, WWE’s developmental system, where wrestlers like Lynch, Flair, and Banks (now Mercedes Moné) were putting on long, technically sound matches that both fans and wrestlers desired. These matches were what McMahon alluded to in his social media post. Positive changes followed: in 2016, the Divas branding and championship were retired and replaced with a women’s title that matched the men’s in design. There are now 10 women’s championships across WWE and its developmental brands. Women headlined WrestleMania 35 in 2019 and have participated in nearly all of WWE’s signature match types, including Royal Rumble, Hell in a Cell, Money in the Bank ladder matches, and, of course, Evolution in 2018.
What Evolution 2 means for women’s wrestling
However, some achievements have caveats. The first women’s Money in the Bank match was won by a man, who retrieved the briefcase and handed it to a female competitor (a rematch was scheduled after the justified outcry). Evolution was initially a response to WWE’s partnership with Saudi Arabia, where women were not allowed to compete at the time. Although women are now permitted to wrestle there, most recently in June, WWE still faces calls to withdraw due to Middle Eastern unrest, a consistent argument from fans. (WWE proceeded with a show in Saudi Arabia shortly after Jamal Khashoggi’s alleged assassination and continues to operate there despite a controversy.)
Perhaps this is why WWE didn’t see the need for another Evolution until next week’s event in Atlanta, Georgia, despite most pay-per-views (or premium live events, as the company calls them) being annual.
Similar to #GiveDivasAChance, fans have been requesting a second installment of Evolution since the first. Indicating the lack of progress, women’s wrestling segments are often cut first, numerous female performers have been released in regular layoffs, and the additional women’s championships are not regularly defended.
Evolution 2 is much needed, even if it seems like an afterthought amidst a busy pay-per-view schedule of six supercards in as many weeks. No matches were announced until less than two weeks before the show, and two of them are multi-women matches, including a battle royal. As of this writing, the women’s United States championship is not scheduled to be defended, despite the purpose of a women’s only pay-per-view being to showcase more matches with in-depth storylines.
Evolution 2 also coincides with All Elite Wrestling (AEW), WWE’s main competitor, holding its All In event, streaming on Prime Video. It raises the question of whether Evolution 2 is once again being used as counter-programming, designed to fail by competing with All In both on streaming and at the stadium across the road. While the overlap between wrestling fans and the Beyhive might not be complete, the increasingly diverse fanbase, which is shifting away from WWE’s conservative leanings towards the more progressive AEW, suggests a greater overlap than expected. With WWE’s move to Netflix earlier this year and more viewers than ever, Evolution 2 has the potential to capture a larger share of that audience, if only WWE would allow it to.
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