Women In The Main Event: Proving The Sandmen Wrong

One knock that many have against the current generation of wrestlers is that they don’t protect their gimmicks. These crazy kids go on the social media & do all kinds of things to break the kayfabe. Pictures are taken with faces & heels together. Hell, some of these wrestlers even post under their shoot names. It’s mind-bending to those used to doing things the old country way.

That’s why it’s almost comforting to know that The Sandman is still living his gimmick.

I’ll be perfectly honest. When I was a young wrestling fan watching ECW through the static of low-powered UHF television, I was a big Sandman fan. Who wouldn’t appreciate a guy wearing a t-shirt & Zubaz pants? The dude drank & smoked on the way to the ring, and hit people with Singapore canes. What wasn’t to love?

Many will tell you that Sandman was overrated as a performer, or just plain not good. Certainly, most wrestlers that drink multiple beers on their way to the ring for their match would be difficult to work with. I would go back to watch some of those ECW shows…but I can’t bring myself to watch the WWE Network versions without the proper music. Sandman making his five minute entrance to something other than Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” just doesn’t work for me.

I still liked the guy back in the day. Not gonna deny it.

Now, I can’t confirm or deny that the man was sloshed at WrestleCade. My sources that were there refuse to confirm or deny, possibly because they were sloshed during the weekend as well. (Purely speculation.) What I can report here is what he told the wrestlers taking part in the promoted main event of WrestleCade’s Super Show event:

Hey remember that time The Sandman came up to four women about to main event to tell us that women main eventing is “wrong” and “any male wrestler with any sort of experience would agree”?

Was this in 1998?

No, it was tonight. December 2019.

— Trisha Parker (@JordynneGrace) December 1, 2019

Now, the standard operating procedure upon reading a tweet like this in 2019 is to go ahead and cancel Sandman. Drag him for his opinions that aren’t in tune with political correctness or the current climate of professional wrestling.

There are a couple of issues I can think of with this.

It’s not him, it’s us!

Tessa Blanchard cut a promo prior to the match addressing “an old ECW guy”. According to her, his issue wasn’t that he didn’t have faith in the wrestlers, but he didn’t have faith in the fans to accept a women’s match as the main event of a show.

I mean…we’ve seen women go on last at WrestleMania & Survivor Series this year and I don’t remember people rioting in response. They didn’t get the type of reaction that Steve Austin main events did back in the day, but here in 2019 what does? Those Seth Rollins main events aren’t exactly knocking peoples’ socks off either. Having a main event match get shit on by fans in 2019 just makes you a typical main eventer. Nothing more, nothing less.

E-C-Dub!

Most of Sandman’s fame can be credited to his time on top of Extreme Championship Wrestling. ECW wasn’t exactly a positive atmosphere for women’s empowerment. They had a number of ladies under employment, but they were mostly there to stand ringside and look good while the crowd asked to see their breasts. Or maybe the fans would chant about how the women had STDs. Matches? Ha. There was the occasional catfight for Joey Styles to scream about, and I think Jazz wrestled some men, but that was about it. Women were second-class citizens in ECW, if that.

Just the other day, former ECW talent Francine did an interview where she talked about how male wrestlers viewed the females as nothing more than ringrats. And if you’ve seen any shoot interview with Sandman, New Jack or Raven, you know that was definitely the case in ECW.

What else would we expect? He’s a boomer!

Come on. Does anybody really expect the Sandman to be enlightened? Is anybody surprised that he shot his mouth off backstage? At least he had the decency to not do it on the show itself. He probably should have expected to get lit up by Tessa Blanchard or somebody publicly because we don’t sweep these things under the rug anymore, but drunks tend not to think about things like that. 

I don’t agree with Sandman’s take. But it would be a mistake to think he’s the only one with this opinion. If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the past few years, it’s that there are a lot of people out there that progressive folks may consider stuck in the past with outdated opinions. If you look at most of our elected officials, you can see that plain as day. 

There are plenty of wrestling fans out there that don’t buy into women main eventing. I’d guess that there are fewer of them now than there were five years ago, but they’re still out there. And I’m sure there are plenty of male wrestlers that aren’t exactly thrilled about taking a back seat to the ladies. Most of them are probably old like Sandman, but there’s surely some younger men that agree with him. 

Boomer is a state of mind, not just an age group.

Fortunately, from the accounts I’ve heard, the four women in the match advertised as the main event had a great outing and the fans bought it. That’s the only way you’re going to convert the Sandmen of the world. They’re not going to go along with new thought based off of shaming & threats of cancellation. 

One could ask why we care about converting the Sandmen of the world. They would point out that Sandman isn’t exactly an active pro wrestler these days. He’s not a voice of influence in anything resembling a major wrestling promotion. He’s just a dude. Why should anybody care what he thinks?

Because The Sandman is what many of us would look like if we were pro wrestlers. OK, I’m being generous. Most of us would look like Tommy Dreamer or Mick Foley at their largest. But they’re both bad examples because Dreamer loves the ladies and Foley has multiple restraining orders against him from former WWE Divas. Sandman is the voice of the average Joe that still thinks that women should be in the kitchen baking brownies, not wrestling in main events or working for a living. They’re out there. Believe me, I live in Kentucky. I know.

Everybody has the right to be wrong. They also have the right to be proven wrong, which today’s crop of female wrestlers do on a pretty regular basis.