Last Updated on: 1st May 2019, 01:36 pm
I admit I don’t watch a lot of intergender wrestling because what I have seen I mostly haven’t cared for, but I’m going to ask this question anyway and then let everyone yell at me to go watch more and figure it out.
How do you present the women in these matches as anything but babyfaces? I’m not trying to be sexist at all here because there are a great many women in this world who could certainly kick my ass, but knowing that women wrestlers are trained professionals just like the guys doesn’t change nature. Most of the time, the man in the situation is going to be bigger and stronger. That’s just how it works. It’s one of the reasons we don’t have intergender MMA. Even when things are as equal as possible, they still aren’t necessarily equal.
It was Tessa Blanchard and Joey Ryan from United We Stand that got me thinking about this again. Tessa is one of Impact’s biggest heels, but she still had to be the face in this match here on this Impact show because by comparison, Joey is a gigantic man. Yes, Joey is totally creepy and comes off like a heel by default, but even if he wasn’t and didn’t, what choice was there? Goliath isn’t usually the good guy, especially when domestic violence is involved. One of the reasons I quit watching Lucha Underground is that I hit my limit for dudes beating the absolute fuck out of women and being told it was ok because equality! It didn’t feel like equality to me. It just felt weird.
Everyone is free to like what they like of course, but I prefer my real and simulated combat sport violence gender separated, thank you.