The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 Stories In Women’s Wrestling In 2017

The idea of writing a single countdown focused on a single year in women’s wrestling would have been out of the question for me when I started this column nearly four years ago. Mind you, I know there was good women’s wrestling out there. TNA had had its peaks with the Knockouts division, in particular with Awesome Kong and Gail Kim playing featured roles, and though I’ve never followed it enough to write intelligently about it, I recognize Japanese promotions and SHIMMER have cast a fine spotlight on some excellent female talents over the years, and that a number of smaller promotions have featured worthy female performers long before it became in vogue to do so with WWE’s so-called “Women’s Revolution.” All that said, I’m a wrestling fan who writes on the topic on the side, I have time to follow WWE and Lucha Underground faithfully, GFW and NXT more sporadically, and only catch the highlights from elsewhere in the wrestling world. Simply put, I wouldn’t have had the information to compile a countdown like this in the past.

But women’s wrestling has gained momentum. Not just in Sasha Banks putting on borderline five star matches in NXT with Becky Lynch and Bayley, or in Banks, Lynch, and Charlote Flair starting a shake up on the main roster in 2015. There was also Princess Kimber Lee winning Chikara’s Grand Championship in 2015, and Sexy Star doing the same in Lucha Underground in 2016. There was Banks and Flair putting on a series of matches that landed in four star territory on WWE’s main roster (arguably the first time two women have consistently had that output in WWE since Alundra Blayze and Bull Nakano over twenty years earlier) and having the first women’s Hell in a Cell Match and first women’s main roster PPV main event in one shot. 2016 also saw Team Sendai Girls become the first all-female team to win Chikara’s King of Trios tournament.

There are all sorts of other milestones in women’s wrestling in recent years, but you get a the gist. In these recent years, women’s matches have contended for match of the year candidates, and when considering the top stories in women’s wrestling, it’s not a matter of scraping the bottom of the barrel for news worthy items, but rather cherry picking from the bunch and making tough choices about placement.

This countdown is based in how much attention, and how much importance is attached to a story, with a healthy serving of my personal opinion. I’ll be the first to concede that the list is WWE heavy, though I’d argue that given the size of the company, most of its stories are bigger than those that happen elsewhere on the wrestling landscape by default.

#7. Carmella Becomes The First Ms. Money in the Bank

2017 saw the first women’s Money in the Bank ladder match. The match concept asserted a certain importance to the SmackDown Women’s Championship—that it was desirable enough to have a briefcase targeting it, and hard enough to win that an up and comer would want to seek out a round-about way of getting edge in a title opportunity. The women competing in a big ladder match also further established that WWE was letting them play on a similar, brutal playing field to the men.

The match itself was good, if marred by the finish of James Ellsworth fetching the briefcase for Carmella. On the plus side, the controversial finish justified a rematch that was even better, and justly got the main event spot on an episode of SmackDown.

Carmella winning and then re-winning the briefcase rewarded a budding heel with an opportunity akin to up and coming male heels, in getting the opportunity to cheaply pursue an opportunity at the title when the champion was at her weakest. While the jury is still out on Carmella’s long-term potential as a star personality and in ring performer, hers was nonetheless one of the biggest stories in women’s wrestling this year.

#6. Natalya Wins the SmackDown Women’s Championship

When Natalya won a shot at the SmackDown Women’s Championship at SummerSlam, I was surprised. I’d written off her WWE tenure at that point as a sad story of a talented wrestler who’d come into her own a little too early before WWE was ready to take women’s wrestling seriously. So, when she did get that shot at SummerSlam, I figured that the popular theory was on point—that WWE extending Naomi’s run as champion before she’d eventually drop it in a face-face collision with Charlotte Flair.

But then Natalya won.

Natalya won cleanly and decisively with her Sharpshooter finisher and in so doing captured gold for just the second time in her WWE tenure, shoring up her legacy, and making her not only relevant but a star for at least this one last go of it. While Charlotte would ultimately relieve her of the title just before Survivor Series, and move on as the brand’s female standard bearer, Natalya got the surprise win and the longer period as champ for 2017.

#5. Asuka Is Cast As the Most Dominant Champion in WWE

Asukca won the NXT Women’s Championship and held it for most of 2016. In 2017, she took her dominance to a new level, though. Both in terms of ability and the way her character was booked, there was no one in NXT who could touch. This led to a number of multi-women title defenses and engaging twice with her top challenger Ember Moon.

The Ember Moon rivalry was particularly telling of Asuka’s WWE trajectory. First, she fended her off at NXT TakeOver: Orlando in a strong match, ultimately using slightly underhanded means to retain her title. Then they clashed again in Brooklyn, in a match many expected to be the passing-the-torch moment from Asuka to the younger star. However, Asuka won that one, too, and in an even better match.

Asuka ultimately dropped the title due to injury, and it was telling that it took 523 days (the way WWE counted them at least) for her to be unseated, and not at the hands of any challenger. As such, she was established as not only the most dominant woman in recent NXT or even WWE memory, but one of the most dominant stars in the company, period.

#4. Alexa Bliss Emerges as the Woman on Raw

Alexa Bliss never won the Women’s Championship in NXT. While she was an emerging talent, she wasn’t considered in the same league as the Four Horsewomen, nor taken as seriously as Nia Jax, or arguably even Carmella. And yet, in late 2016, her budding charisma (and, to a lesser extent, her in ring progress) earned her the opportunity to win the SmackDown Women’s Championshp.

Early 2017 saw Bliss shore up her spot at the head of SmackDown’s women’s division, getting the better of her program overall with Becky Lynch. Bliss would ultimately drop the title to Naomi (twice) but then moved to Raw where she did the unlikely—beating Charlotte or any other Horsewomen to the feat of being the first woman to have held both the SmackDown and Raw Women’s Championships. She quite soundly won her rivalry with Bayley and then went fifty-fifty with Sasha Banks, emerging with the championship still intact. In an unlikely turn, Five Feet of Fury became the top star for women’s wrestling on WWE’s main roster in 2017. Charlotte making her tap at Survivor Series suggests that she’ll still be the face of WWE women’s wrestling moving forward, but 2017 belonged to Bliss.

#3. Sexy Star Gets Herself Blacklisted

Sexy Star isn’t exactly a househould name, and is a rare entity to break into this countdown without having at least some affiliation with WWE. Unfortunately, she doesn’t make the list for great reasons.

Sexy Star has been a star in lucha libre for some time who grew more familiar to American audiences as a featured performer for Lucha Underground, including wrestling an epic No Mas Match with Mariposa, and later becoming the first and to date only female Lucha Underground Champion. She got herself into a bit of a mess at the AAA TripleMania XXV event in Mexico. In a four-way match, Star and Lady Shani purportedly started shooting on one another, and then Rosemary from TNA got caught in the mess.

The finish of the match saw Star apply a rough looking cross armbreaker for the submission. It’s unclear if she used a working or shoot hold at that time, but it’s clearer that when she held on and cranked the hold after the match it was legit and she legitimately injured Rosemary.

In the Internet and social media eras, word travels fast and before long, wrestlings stars large and small, including WWE personnel were posting to condemn what Sexy Star had done as wildly unprofessional and malicious. She was arguably on the tip-top tier of female stars who hadn’t worked for WWE, but by all indications no one wants anything to do with her anymore after an ugly incident that went viral.

#2. The Mae Young Classic

For WWE, women’s wrestling was traditionally a side attraction. In the olden days there’d be one women’s match on a card for some variety, and when times got tough during Alundra Blayze’s heyday, the company didn’t think twice about discontinuing the division altogether. When they brought it back, the product was largely sexualized during the Attitude Era, and even into the PG Era when the company persisted with a model of hiring models on the hope that they could successfully train to wrestle.

A lot has changed, much of which I addressed earlier in this column, and a lot of that change gets encapsulated I the Mae Young Classic—a WWE Network tournament that called in no fewer than thirty-two female talents, only a handful of whom were already in the developmental system. Like the Cruiserweight Classic and UK Championship before it, the tournament highlighted a previously under-recognized segment of the wrestling community who did themselves proud with a fine series of matches.

It’s unclear if we’ll see another Mae Young Classic, but the interest and the depth of talent seems to be there. Regardless, that WWE would pursue this enterprise as a viable featured product for its Network speaks volume as to where women’s wrestling is now and how WWE sees it.

#1. GLOW on Netflix

While the real life world of women’s wrestling produced a number of noteworthy stories in 2017, the biggest mainstream crossover moment for women’s wrestling this year was the airing of GLOW a Netflix original series inspired by the cult-favorite wrestling promotion of the 1980s. The show featured legit stars like Alison Brie and Marc Meron, while also finding a regular spot for legit wrestler Awesome Kong, besides guest roles for Johnny Mundo, Alex Riley, Carlito, and a number of others.

The most promising part of it all? The show was actually good. It was entertaining enough that I suspect a casual, non-wrestling fan could enjoy it. Moreover, as a fan, the show actually landed, demonstrating respect for wrestling psychology, how to cultivate a heel, and the idea of the money being in the chase.

While the Mae Young Classic was purportedly a major success for WWE Network viewership, GLOW was a show that landed with television viewers en masse. While it may not have converted new fans to the business, it may have made some folks think more critically about wrestling beyond the stereotype of big people pretending to fight for a live crowd. I imagine the show might have brought back some fans, luring them in on the nostalgia of wrestling memories, and for us die-hard fans it offered a fun alternative style of wrestling programming, in the form of historical fiction based on a company from yesteryear.

Which stories would you add to the list? Gail Kim’s retirement, and Charlotte Flair capturing the SmackDown Women’s Championship were some of my nearest misses for the countdown. Let us know what you think in the comments.

Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.