Should WWE Embrace Intergender Wrestling?

A funny thing happened when I watched the November 23, 2016 episode of Lucha Underground. I froze on an image of muscle-bound Johnny Mundo in the mounted position, raining punches down on Sexy Star.

I’ve watched wrestling my whole life, and an adult life it takes a lot for worked violence to disturb me. Yet there was something about this particular, unspectacular spot—the realism and blunt nature of a man punching a woman in the face repeatedly—that troubled me. It’s a moment that transcended the theater of pro wrestling, to the point at which, for an instant, I actually hated Mundo and that he would do that.

That’s when I realized that, as much as I’ve watched wrestling for over thirty years and was brought up smark, this was one of those unusual situations in which they got me. The creative powers that be at Lucha Underground succeeded in making the most level-headed, cynical wrestling fan drop his guard and lose himself to the show.

And that’s pretty cool.

Mundo is the LU champ now, and the fact that he needed outside interference from Taya to get the better of Star doesn’t exactly improve his kayfabe. But that’s a good thing, too, because his character is an asshole heel and in this moment he’s rivaling Honky Tonk Man levels of sleaze and resulting heat.

And Mundo’s actions against Star are not the first, nor even close to the highest profile instances of men earning heat over women in pro wrestling.

Consider Andy Kaufman. Most readers will be familiar with his legendary worked shoot program with Jerry Lawler, and it’s worth noting that the whole issue got its on-air start with Kaufman proclaiming himself the World Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion. He’d repeatedly challenge women to wrestling matches and beat them. The angle worked both for the sheer heat of a man physically subduing an untrained woman, and for the audacity of his physically unimpressive man to crow as if these victories were some sort of accomplishment. Thus, Kaufman achieved nuclear heat, only for Lawler to capitalize on it by piledriving him into the hospital.

Women haven’t always been portrayed as victims, however. Once again, Memphis comes to mind, as Miss Texas (later WWE’s Jacqueline/Jackie) got into the fray with men to the point that she earned some national notoriety by becoming the first woman ranked in the Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s PWI 500. She’d be followed, on a much more prominent stage, by Chyna entering the men’s ranks in the WWF.

Chyna wrestling men turned much of the men versus women paradigm on its head for the simple fact that she was as big and physically strong as she was, and thus looked totally out of place and indomitable opposite other women, and much more natural opposing her male counterparts. Following her heel work with DX and The Corporation during which she wrestled sporadically, Chyna broke out on her own as a legit mid-card act, particularly in the thick of the Intercontinental Championship scene. In that role, the WWF capitalized on some pretty brilliant storylines—rivaling overt misogynist Jeff Jarrett, unscrupulous Chris Jericho who made no bones about breaking a woman’s thumb so he could get the advantage over her, and perhaps most memorably of all Eddie Guerrero who always walked the line between love interest and in-ring rival. These are intriguing storylines the WWF had never really been able to touch before, and haven’t really since, facilitated by a unique female performer who could stand up for herself, and going hand-in-hand with the cutting edge Attitude Era. While critics, including Jericho, have been vocal that Chyna wasn’t actually much of a worker, and none of the resulting matches were exactly classics, the fact remains that from a plot perspective, the character and resulting angles worked. (For the sake of efficiency, I’m not going into them all, but rest assured I’m aware that other women were less prominently or consistently featured opposite men around this time, too—most notably Sable emerging from her abusive relationship with Marc Mero by powerbombing his sorry ass).

WCW aimed to capture some of the same magic, introducing Asya into its mix as an answer to Chyna, plugging Madusa into the Cruiserweight division, and then more casually having women like Torrie Wilson engage their male counterparts in mixed tag scenarios. Neither WCW’s long-term storytelling, nor short-term match layout skills could match the WWF’s, though. While Madusa’s less remembered efforts were probably the best of the bunch, Asya was exposed as completely unprepared for her ongoing role, and the sight of Wilson armdragging Shane Douglas was downright embarrassing both in terms of physicality and crispness of work. In short, the scenario was completely unbelievable.

Post-Attitude, mainstream wrestling has been reticent to revisit intergender wrestling. WWE in particular seems conscious of avoiding all of the complications of a man perpetrating violence upon a woman on TV, with just a small handful of exceptions like Christian beating Trish Stratus in the build to his rivalry with Chris Jericho for the purpose of getting some cheap heat, Santino’s pure comedy work dressing in drag to win the women’s battle royal at WrestleMania 25, or women like Kharma and Beth Phoenix entering the men’s fray for one-off Royal Rumble appearances because they did have the physical stature to compete. TNA may have encapsulated WWE’s concerns on this matter best in 2014, at the climax of Dixie Carter’s run as a heel authority figure, at which point Bubba Ray Dudley powerbombed her through a table to a good pop from the crowd. A fitting payoff to a storyline? Maybe. But the moment was also uncomfortable enough from a man-attacking-woman perspective that it didn’t exactly become the kind of highlight reel footage anyone to rewatch. Yes, Dudley had done the same to women in the WWF Attitude Era, but he was mostly working heel then, and in a different era when the WWF was still testing boundaries.

Intergender wrestling has gathered some steam of late. Princess Kimber Lee capped 2015 by winning Chikara’s Grand Championship. While the designations are a little arbitrary, this was generally agreed upon as the first time a woman won the top title in a predominantly male US wrestling promotion of any size or scope. Then there’s the case of Sexy Star, whose title win leaked long before it aired, but who, in the LU universe, won the top prize this month in Aztec Warfare, capped by pinning Mil Muertes in convincing fashion with the aid of some foreign objects. Sure, she dropped the title a week later, but there’s a real argument to be made this was the biggest intergender title win a woman has ever had on the American wrestling scene.

So, we arrive at a fascinating dilemma for WWE. The promotion has spent the last year and half touting its women’s division. Indeed, with the additions of Sasha Banks, Charlotte, Becky Lynch, and Bayley have elevated women’s wrestling on the whole from side attraction to talents totally on par with the men’s upper-mid-card, if not main event scene—hence Banks and Charlotte ultimately main eventing a PPV and two Raws to date.

But could these women cross the frontier and, despite not physically matching their male counterparts? Would WWE want to see that happen?

There’s a fair enough argument not to. WWE doesn’t need to test these controversial boundaries, particularly when there are the aforementioned top-tier women active to work with each other, not to mention Asuka in NXT, Paige potentially coming back from suspension/injury eventually, past talents like Mickie James and Lita to conceivably bring back in the short term, a pool of of indy talent to potentially pull from, and second-tier talents like Nikki Bella, Alexa Bliss, Alicia Fox, and Nia Jax to keep the women’s division varied and interesting. Moreover, given the overt influence of MMA on WWE over time, and Ronda Rousey’s storied run atop UFC’s women’s division, there’s a very fair argument that a women’s division can thrive and be a draw without ever really crossing paths with men.

And yet–

Women, not unlike Cruiserweights continue to face something of a glass ceiling effect relative to their male counterparts. It’s great for women to headline a B-PPV, but I struggle to imagine women main eventing SummerSlam, let alone WrestleMania unless WWE were to book it as such on pure principle, to say that they’d done it, rather than any organic sense that the female Superstars are actually the top draws over Brock Lesnar, John Cena, Triple H, Roman Reigns, or Seth Rollins. Remember the early days of Rey Mysterio’s WWE run, firmly entrenched in the Cruiserweight and tag team ranks. The guy was solidly in the conversation for greatest in-ring talents under WWE contract from 2002 to 2005, but no one really took him seriously as top guy material until he crossed the threshold to regularly, successfully feuding with the Big Shows and Randy Ortons of the WWE Universe.

One of the barriers, for sure, is physical size. Could top female star, 5’5” 115 pound Sasha Banks be remotely credible wrestling lower card 6’6”, 270 pound Titus O’Neil? It’s easy to say no, but then should 6’1”, 225 pound Shawn Michaels have been able to beat 6’9”, 300 pound Diesel? Let alone, should 5’6”, 175 pound Rey Mysterio have been competitive in his multi-match rivalry against 6’6”, 290 pound Batista? With the exception of explicitly delineated Cruiserweight-type divisions, pro wrestling operates outside weight classes, and it’s a part of why David vs. Goliath stories are so inextricably woven into the fabric of the business. Big Show gets killer heat by swinging Mysterio (stretcher and all) into a ring post. Mysterio is all the more of an inspirational hero for overcoming the size disadvantage when he beats Orton and Kurt Angle to win his first world title at WrestleMania 22. We willfully suspend our disbelief because the show is much better when we do.

I’m not going to say that I don’t have my misgivings about watching men vs. women. If Mundo working the ground and pound on Star troubled me, you’d better believe me that watching Lesnar pummel Bayley would give me some serious pause. Intergender wrestling is fundamentally easier to pull off when the women are bigger, the men are smaller, and both parties are comparably skilled. While the skill gap has become all but obliterated in recent years, the size and strength gaps are still very real, and having smaller men to compete with women is a much more common dynamic on the indy scene than it is in WWE guys, where dudes being as big as Lesnar or Braun Strowman is part of the attraction.

So a modest proposal: let’s try it out intergender wrestling by stages and degrees. The Cruiserweight Classic was great, but the division has been largely heatless in the aftermath. So what about letting women start there? Take Charlotte vs. Brian Kendrick—she’s taller than and probably within twenty-to-thirty pounds of him. Both of them are rock solid hands. Put them together and Charlotte finally has a suitably sized base to fire moonsaults at, and Kendrick has new means of achieving heel dickery.

I can’t claim to have all the answers and WWE is mainstream enough that the company is perfectly justified in steering clear of murky waters. Just the same, watching not just one but a cluster of today’s very best women ascend to new heights not just on their own, but in realms previously reserved only for men could be all kinds of inspired and open up a lot of interesting possibilities for storytelling.