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The official evolution of WWE’s women has been happening since 2015. With the introductions of Sasha Banks, Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair to WWE’s main roster, and the introductions of Team Bella, Team PCB and Team BAD, all the way to the first ever pay-per-view main event/Hell in a Cell, a lot has happened with WWE’s women’s division.
But who is responsible for it all?
This past Thursday, Stephanie McMahon sat down with SportsCenter’s Elle Duncan to discuss it:
“It came about for a couple of different reasons. One, my husband, Paul Levesque, known as “Triple H” … he’s in charge of all our talent development. And what he wanted was to recruit the most elite athletes in the world, male and female, and he wanted to give the platform to really train. So men and women were trained the exact same way. And not only that, then in NXT, which started off as our developmental brand… and is now a global touring brand, the women were actually given the same amount of time in their matches on television as the men, which had never really happened before. So this groundswell came about from our audience. And, of course, on the executive side a number of us had been advocating for this for a long time, but then, there was a match on Monday Night Raw and it featured a tag team match of our, what was then called the Divas division, that lasted all of thirty seconds, and our fans started a trend called “Give Divas A Chance” that trended worldwide for three days.
And their voice was so loud, and so strong that our chairman and CEO [Vince McMahon] responded and said “we hear you, keep watching #GiveDivasAChance”. And since then, at last year’s WrestleMania, again on our grandest stage, WWE Hall of Famer Lita came out to the ring and she announced that we were rebranding the Divas division to the Women’s division, she unveiled the new championship belt which evolved from a butterfly to a championship belt more akin to the men’s, and said that our female athletes are now going to be called Superstars – just like the men.
And since that time, our women have competed in main events from television storylines to pay-per-views and – we still have a long way to go, but we’re certainly getting there, and they’re incredibly talented – all of our women, and all of the women who’ve paved the way throughout history.”
Who do you think started the Evolution? Do you agree with Stephanie? Let us know your views in the comments below!
