If there’s one good thing about Wrestlemanias, whether you watch them or not, it’s usually the most opportune time for the WWE to make some changes upon it’s passing. Throughout the years, belt changes have often come on or immediately after Wrestlemanias, including numerous iterations of the World title, the Intercontinental championship. all the times John Cena wigger-ized both the United States and the World championships. But at long last, the most visually problematic belt of the bunch, the maligned Divas Championship was finally put to rest, replaced with the new and respectable WWE Women’s Championship.
This is a step in the right direction. But a bigger step in the right direction is the WWE’s decision to finally scrap the whole notion of “Divas” in the first place, and anoint the women wrestlers with the same distinction as the male wrestlers – Superstars.
It’s not so much that I’m some ultra feminist, as much as it’s simply the fact that I recognize that women’s wrestling has come leaps and bounds from the days of Torrie Wilson versus Stacy Keibler cat fights or Sable versus Jacqueline piss breaks. Those were Divas. From AJ Lee, Paige, to the more current crop of stars like Charlotte, Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch, and those on the way like Bayley and Asuka, calling any of them Divas isn’t as much of a disservice as much as it’s simply kind of insulting. All of these women have proven that they can go, and it’s at last long overdue that they’re no longer denigrated by the title of Diva, and called the Superstars that they really are.
Big kudos to the design of the belt, basically making it the white and red clone to the World Championship. By doing so, it demonstrates equal importance and prestige to that of a World Championship, and it’s nice to see the Butterfly belt has been killed off, and replaced with something that looks like it’s worth fighting for.
Naturally, with the death of Diva, it begs to ask the question of what’s going to happen to the (alleged) hit show Total Divas, that I’d given up on four seasons ago once it inevitably became a vehicle to drive storylines for television. Given the fact that it’s on it’s like fifth or sixth season (somehow), I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it’s pretty much at the end of it’s line. Given the fact that the Bella Twins, the original focal points of the show are injured or retired now, not to mention Natalya’s basically a performing trainer who jobs to the upstarts, it’s safe to assume the show’s running out of fuel, and the notion that the namesake Divas is dead, it’s a safe bet to assume the show’s on its way out too.
Anyway, it’s nice to see the respect towards the women Superstars is growing, and their own roster is a few components shy of becoming a truly entertaining division. Perhaps when Bayley arrives, and Paige somehow gets out of the doghouse she seems to be in, there can be more than one compelling women’s storyline going on at once. Baby steps, though, baby steps.
