411’s The Women’s Evolution in WWE & Beyond SXSW Panel Report: Triple H Pushes Back Against Inter-Gender Wrestling, Responds to AEW Question

– We’re live at SXSW 2019 and getting ready for WWE’s featured session today titled The Women’s Evolution in WWE and Beyond. The panel will include Triple H, Stephanie McMahon, and Charlotte Flair, and be moderated by Cathy Kelley.

Awaiting the #WWE women’s evolution panel to begin at #sxsw pic.twitter.com/KuMYuUq1zJ

— 411 Wrestling (@411wrestling) March 9, 2019

– The synopsis for the session reads: Brave women and men from all walks of life are stepping into the spotlight to shine a brighter light on gender equality gaps. This industry shift has brought global attention to the need for women to have greater opportunities. In February 2015, WWE fans created the viral hashtag #GiveDivasAChance as a rallying cry for female performers to be featured in more prominent storylines. WWE has since responded with the Women’s Revolution. No longer known as “Divas,” WWE “Superstars” now receive more air time to showcase their athleticism. WWE has not only increased its dynamic female fan base, but is actively empowering women inside and outside the ring. This will be a discussion focused on the broader industry relevance of women’s empowerment and the leadership needed to foster change.

– WWE has not historically had much of a presence at SXSW aside from a few things here and there over the years but this year, along with this panel that focuses on women’s wrestling (which obviously ties in with the big Ronda Rousey/Becky Lynch/Charlotte Flair WrestleMania angle), they also have a WWE lounge setup where they are giving away free WWE SWAG and letting fans pose with the WWE Title belt.

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– Cathy Kelly introduces everyone. Stephanie comes out first, followed by Triple H and Charlotte Flair.

– Stephanie talks about how WWE started training their women the same as the men at the WWE Performance Center, leading to the #GiveDivasAChance hashtag catching on. Stephanie notes how women’s matches being 30 seconds was the ‘norm’ back then but as fans demanded more from the women, WWE responded. She goes over the evolution of women in WWE, noting how WWE started calling their women Superstars instead of Divas, changed the look of the women’s title, the first women’s PPV Evolution, performing in Abu Dhabi and hearing fans chant “This Is Hope,” etc.

– Charlotte talks about how it’s easier to wrestle in front of 100,000 people than talk in front of a panel. She goes over how she remembers when women’s matches were only 30 seconds in WWE and how in NXT, she was used to more time and main eventing shows. She thought to herself how when she got to the main roster, she wanted more time and more opportunity. She said she wants to be looked at as an equal, and wants fans to view her matches as not just good women’s matches, but a good match by any standard. She says every woman in the WWE locker room plays an important role and this is only the beginning.

– Triple H jokes that the phrase “male dominated world” doesn’t apply anymore and that women will have to come up with a new phrase because women are doing so much now.

– Triple H talks about how when he took over WWE developmental, he saw that the world had changed and people were willing to accept new things. He saw how women were told to wrestle matches in different ways and that was something he immediately wanted to change. He wanted the women to work matches just like the men. He said that if WWE’s great female athletes weren’t allowed to be great athletes, they weren’t being given the opportunity they deserved. He brought up athletes like Serena Williams and Ronda Rousey and how the world accepts female athletes in a new way now. He talked about how he told women in development that they had to create the future they wanted, that they created the current women’s revolution, and they deserve it.

Triple H talks at the #wwe panel at #sxsw pic.twitter.com/KDeSbgBxkg

— 411 Wrestling (@411wrestling) March 9, 2019

– Triple H said that when they look to sign new women, they look for the same stuff that they look for in the guys — character, personality, charisma, the human being, the person who can present to the world, the person who wants to succeed and who want to be emerging leaders.

– Charlotte talks about how awesome it is for her to see little boys wearing women’s superstar merchandise, and to see how much WWE means to people. She is proud to be a role model to little girls.

– Stephanie talks about how important social media and digital are to WWE. She mentions how social media allows fans to engage with the particular superstars that they like, and this allows a closer relationship to form. She notes how heated the current social media stuff with Ronda Rousey and Becky Lynch has gotten. She talks about how important community, and the WWE Universe is to them.

– Charlotte talks about how she plays a bad guy right now, and Stephanie jokes that they’re all currently bad guys. Triple H asks if it is PC to say “bad girl” right now. Charlotte says that she likes being able to use social media to show people who she really is, so that fans don’t only see the character she plays.

– Triple H talks about how there aren’t a lot of sporting events that have the family feel that WWE does. He says that WrestleMania with 101,000 fans still somehow feels like a family event, and that WWE events never have fights break out between fans or anything like that because the fans are all so connected, even if they aren’t from the same country. He says social media further amplifies this and allows these fans to connect like never before. He tells a story about how this group of fans met at an NXT event and now maintain that friendship around the country and get together for NXT shows.

– Stephanie says WWE’s mission is to put smiles on people’s faces. She says entertainment is part of that, as well as social work, and women’s empowerment. She talks about working with a group called GirlUp that helps bring girls into sports. She talks about the importance of team work that girls learn in sports. She notes how wonderful it was to see Charlotte in the ESPN The Body issue. She also talks about working with the Boys and Girls Club and Unicef.

– Triple H says that talent is not obligated by WWE to do community service work or be “part of the team” — they all do it because they want to do it, and that for many of them, it’s their favorite part of the job. He talks about how so many of the male wrestlers wanted to be at the Evolution PPV to cheer on the women to the point that they had to cut off how many could come.

– Charlotte talks about how just five years ago, she was wrestling in a warehouse in front of seven people every Thursday. She says how she felt like she didn’t know what she was doing, and to go from that to main eventing RAW with Sasha Banks was amazing. And to then go on to headline a major PPV. She says her father didn’t know much about women’s wrestling, and how he told her she’d be fine but didn’t know what to say about it, and how he never thought she’d headline a PPV. She said it was one of the proudest moments of his career to see her headline a PPV. She stresses how much work and how long a journey it has been to get women’s wrestling to where it is now, with multiple storylines, main event slots, tag team wrestling, etc. It wasn’t just management dictating that they wanted to give women more time, it was the women wrestlers pushing to get those spots and opportunities. She says now she hopes that the guys watch their matches and think, ‘we should really step up our game’.

– Triple H says the women earned what they’ve gotten, nobody promised them anything. He says nobody promised any of these women main event slots, that they pushed for and got it on their own through hard work.

– Charlotte talks about how much creative freedom the women get in character development. She says management doesn’t tell them exactly what to do in terms of wardrobe, character development, promo work, in-ring work, etc. and that it has been up to them to come up with a lot of that themselves. She says she now tries to help the younger female talent with these elements. She talks about how she picked out her robes herself.

– Cathy Kelley notes how several women wrestlers are now mothers.

– Stephanie talks about how many years the women’s revolution has really taken, noting that many of the trailblazers in women’s wrestling go back to the days before most of the people here were born, all the women who worked as managers, the women who were used as “eye candy,” etc.

– Stephanie talks about how WWE invests so much time in promoting their women, and that is why the audiences have reacted the way they have, noting that other media only dedicate 5% of their time to women’s sports. Stephanie says 40% of their audience is now female. She jokes how WWE is the second most watched YouTube channel in the world, behind a Bollywood channel that they’ll never catch.

– Triple H talks about the shift in how men view women’s wrestling. He says male fans, especially young boys, often have a female favorite wrestler. He talks about how fans are now accepting heroes and bad guys regardless of if they are male or female.

– Stephanie talks about all the opportunities WWE’s women wrestlers are getting outside of the ring now, noting Paige and the Fighting With My Family movie. She talks about Total Bellas, Total Divas, Miz and Mrs., etc. and how they’re just scratching the surface in terms of opportunities for their female performers. She also notes how WWE has many women in key executive jobs. She says diversity is important because different perspectives and different voices are needed.

– Triple H says the bottomline is who is doing the job. If it’s a man, great, if it’s a woman, great, but the job goes to the best person. He says they aren’t trying to fill quotas, but trying to fill jobs with the best people.

– Stephanie talks about how her and Triple H’s daughters view women’s wrestling as it currently is as a normal thing, so this current revolution just seems like a norm to them. They’ve never seen anything else. They are used to a women’s Royal Rumble, or a women’s PPV, etc. Triple H jokes that their daughters are a bit spoiled because they’ve already been in the ring with Charlotte Flair and Ronda Rousey. Stephanie jokes that her oldest daughter joked that she doesn’t want Stephanie’s job when she grows up, she wants Vince McMahon’s job.

– Stephanie talks about WWE’s women action figures. Triple H remembers a meeting with a toy executive (not from Mattel) who told him once that women’s action figures would never sell, and he thought it was strange that they already knew something wouldn’t sell when they hadn’t done it yet. Then they did the figures with Mattel and they did sell.

– Charlotte says the next thing for women’s wrestling is main eventing WrestleMania — having the last match. She says she wants the momentum to continue.

– Stephanie says she wants true equality and parity on the roster.

– Triple H says the work will be ongoing and how he hopes that soon they won’t need panels about women in wrestling because it’s so normal.

– Stephanie asked Triple H to give advice to the guys in the room about supporting women. Triple H said too many guys view women’s empowerment as a threat and it’s not. He says guys shouldn’t be threatened by women, and that if you’re not good enough, get out of the way.

– Triple H and Charlotte named Norman Smiley, Terry Taylor, and William Regal as some of the unsung heroes in women’s wrestling in terms of training. Charlotte talked about how women in WWE were told before to not “punch as good as the guys” and remembered Michelle McCool being told to not do things as well as the guys, and how that’s a thing of the past.

– Triple H was asked about WWE having “well funded competition” for the first time in awhile, a likely reference to AEW. He started his response by joking that the fan must be asking about the XFL competing with the NFL, then said broadly that WWE competes with everything.

“You talking about the XFL or the NFL? I think the XFL has a pretty good shot at it, I don’t know. There’s always competition. We compete against everything. The truth is if you’re in the entertainment business, or the sports business, or the news business, it’s all entertainment, right? And you’re fighting for eye balls and people’s time. It’s the most valuable thing that anybody has in this world. It’s not money, it’s not possessions, it’s time. We all have a limited amount of it. Everyone in here’s gonna die.”

Stephanie then joked, “We’re really ending on a positive note.”

Triple H picked back up:

“Go to another positive panel after this one. It’s what you do with the time between now and then. Right? So, uh, I don’t even remember what the question was. Yeah. We fight against everything. We fight against sleep. We fight against the internet. We fight against people playing video games. I mean, it’s 24/7, there is always something out there that competes for time.”

– Triple H was asked by a fan about when inter-gender matches would happen in WWE after they planted the seeds with Nia Jax in the men’s Royal Rumble this year. He responded with:

“So, this is one of the things that is baffling to me,” Triple H said. “Why does inter-gender need to happen? Why? Because the women aren’t good enough to have their own thing going on and to compete against themselves, and dominate, and win, and main event, and put on better performances — they need a guy to do that?”

The fan responded that he wants to see the “first female World Wrestling champ,” and after Triple H responded with, “You’ve already seen it happen,” the fan clarified that he didn’t mean the Divas or women’s wrestling, but the overall champion, to which Triple H said, “So you feel like, in order for them to prove themselves, they need to do that against a guy?” The fan responded that if he wanted the women to “take a step up” and Triple H jumped in and asked, “Why is that a step up? Why is that a step up? To do it against a guy is a step up? So by definition, they are a step down?” The fan responded that women aren’t on the Mount Rushmore of wrestling and to get on there, women need to fight men. The crowd found that comment to be a bit sexist and Triple H asked if anybody else wanted to take that one.

Charlotte Flair jumped in with her thoughts.

“Coming from a female talent, I have no — I could care less about wrestling men. Because I think that it’s harder to tell a story when it’s female talent vs. female talent. Yeah, you can get a cheap reaction wrestling a guy, ‘Oh, I slapped him’ or he hits me, but that’s not hard. That’s not entertaining. That’s an easy reaction. Versus having to tell a good story.”

– A fan asked about making TV time more 50/50 between women and men. Stephanie said the best stories will get the TV time and that they want to have talent equality throughout.

– And that’s a wrap.