Sisterhood of the Squared Circle: The History and Rise of Women’s Wrestling - Softcover

Laprade, Pat

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1770413073 ISBN 13: 9781770413078

Publisher: ECW Press, 2017

Synopsis

Documenting the rise of women’s wrestling from sideshow to WWE main event

Sisterhood of the Squared Circle presents the fascinating history of women’s wrestling, from the carnival circuit of the late 1800s to today’s hugely popular matches. With more than 100 wrestler profiles, find out how backstage politics, real-life grudges, and incredible personalities shaped the business. The careers of many well-known trailblazers, including Mildred Burke, the Fabulous Moolah, Mae Young, Penny Banner, Wendi Richter, Trish Stratus, Chyna, and Lita, are celebrated alongside today’s stars, like Charlotte, Sasha Banks, and Bayley.

With rare photographs and an exploration of women’s wrestling worldwide including chapters on Japan, Mexico, England, and Australia Sisterhood of the Squared Circle is a priceless contribution to the history of professional wrestling.

About this title

About the Author:

Pat Laprade has been involved in pro wrestling for 15 years and has contributed to many women’s wrestling promotions, including SHIMMER and Femmes Fatales. He co-wrote Wrestling Observer’s 2013 book of the year Mad Dogs, Midgets and Screw Jobs as well as a biography of Maurice Mad Dog” Vachon. He lives in Montreal, Quebec. Dan Murphy has been a writer for Pro Wrestling Illustrated since 1997 and has overseen PWI’s annual female 50 ranking since its inception in 2008. He lives in Buffalo and has written four books on the history of his native western New York. Trained in the legendary Hart Dungeon, Natalya is a former WWE Women’s Champion. She lives in Tampa, Florida.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

NXT,the Revolution, and the Return of the Women’s Title

As late as 2012, when Sasha Banks was hired by WWE, their vision of women’s wrestling was very different from what it is today. “When I first started, we were told to wrestle like Divas,” Banks recalled on WWE 24. “No strikes, no hitting, pull the hair, catfights.” Consequently, of all WWE’s big-stage women’s matches between 1988 and June 2013, only four had been given at least three stars by Dave Meltzer. But in the following years, that ratio would change quite a bit.

At the TLC PPV on December 15, 2013, Divas champion A.J. Lee and Natalya would have one of those matches. Although Natalya was praised for her performance, to her credit, it was Lee’s second three-star match that year, the first one being against former partner Kaitlyn in what was the best women’s match in WWE since Trish and Lita. Four months later, in Little Rock, Arkansas, during a Main Event taping, the tandem did it again, upping their game with an even better 14-minute match. Meltzer, who gave the match three and a half stars, wrote that it “was the best women’s match on WWE TV in so long I can’t even remember, and better than anything women’s wise in WWE or TNA since the Gail Kim vs. Taryn Terrell matches.”

Unfortunately, the company was unable to transfer that energy into WrestleMania that year, where a multiwoman match didn’t place high in anyone’s rankings. Although the situation wasn’t constant on the main roster, down in Orlando, Florida, a number of women were starting to flourish.

Paul Levesque’s brainchild, NXT, is the developmental territory of WWE. In February 2014, Levesque produced the first two-hour special to be presented on the WWE Network, NXT Arrival. Paige, the NXT women’s champion and perhaps the first one to separate herself from the pack, wrestled Emma, who was caught in a comedy act with Santino on the main roster. They were given more time than usual for a women’s match, and they had a good match. “For me I always felt like our Divas and women were underutilized. It was about treating them like the athletes they are,” said Levesque on WWE 24.

Since Paige was called up to the main roster a few months later, she vacated the title and a tournament was held to crown the next champion. On May 29, 2014, NXT TakeOver would become a game changer. In the tournament final, Ashley Fliehr ― better known as Charlotte, Ric Flair’s daughter ― was to face another competitor with wrestling in her genes, Natalya.

Charlotte won the match and the title, but that’s secondary. In a show where Sami Zayn faced Tyler Breeze and Neville squared off with Tyson Kidd, Charlotte and Natalya, with Flair and Bret Hart in their respective corners, had the best match on the card, something completely unheard of by WWE standards.

“It came across as the epic women’s match in modern WWE,” wrote Meltzer, who gave the match a whopping four stars. “It was presented differently than any women’s match, almost like a world title match, was given time and it was the performance of a career of Natalya to insiders. But it also was the breakout performance of Charlotte, who came across like a future superstar if the women’s division in its future changes from models doing short matches to women wrestlers doing serious pro wrestling.”

If WWE was still presenting Divas, NXT became the place to watch great women’s wrestling. It didn’t matter which male wrestler was on the show; at every NXT special since that night, a women’s match has been one of the highlights at the end of the night.

Around the same time, a new phenomenon was the talk of the town in women’s combat sport, and her name was Ronda Rousey. Between February 2013 and August 2015, she won her six UFC fights, totaling less than eight minutes in the Octagon. She was put in the main event of a PPV on her first night in with the company, something seen as a gutsy move at the time as it was also UFC’s first women’s fight ever. But UFC proved to be right. Her fight with Liz Carmouche drew 450,000 buys on PPV, destroying the previous record for a women’s fight main-eventing a PPV, held by Laila Ali vs. Jacqui Frazier (respectively the daughters of Muhammad and Joe) in a boxing match in 2001 with more than 100,000 buys. Rousey would become one of UFC’s biggest draws ever. She had the ability to connect with people, she was dominating her opponents, and she was presented as a star from the get-go. Rousey became in a way what any woman performing in combat sports wanted to be.

“It kills the out-of-date and stupid idea that women can’t fight and cannot generate any attention from the public. She is the proof that good women fighting works,” said LuFisto. “She’s a great role model for all us women ― and definitely, I feel like she’s a huge part of the Divas’ revolution too,” added Paige.

Rousey’s success and ability to draw is the reason McMahon and Levesque decided to put more emphasis on the women’s division and to make a pitch for a revolution to begin in the WWE. So in the summer of 2015, they brought up Charlotte, Sasha Banks, and Becky Lynch all at the same time, with the idea of showcasing women to a degree the company had never done before. But if Levesque is the one in charge of NXT, the last word goes to his father-in-law when it comes to WWE. In a conference call for the NXT TakeOver: Respect show in October 2015, Levesque summed up Vince McMahon and his vision of women’s wrestling: “Is there a different way that he wants to present it in his mind on the main roster, whatever, sure. That’s where he is with it.”

And that’s probably why the concept never truly transferred from NXT fans to WWE fans. All the things that made those NXT matches so great, all the things that made Rousey a superstar ― almost nothing of that was used at first for the women on the main roster. And even if there has been some change lately, still very few WWE events are main-evented by women.

Instead of letting the ones who could actually give a four-star performance work together, creative mingled the Divas and the wrestlers. Instead of letting personalities get over to create feuds, creative decided to play teacher, with Stephanie making teams on air like a high school teacher would do. Instead of letting the fans slowly witness the changes, seeing the upgrade in the workrate and the presentation and organically becoming fans of the product, creative pushed the “Divas Revolution” expression down their throats to the point the fans couldn’t take it anymore and simply decided to reject the whole idea. At the end of the day, WWE wasn’t willing to recognize Divas as wrestlers yet; the fact that the NXT title was called the women’s title, while in WWE it was still called the Divas’ title, expressed it the best.

THE DEATH OF THE DIVAS TITLE

It took almost a year before WWE presented its women differently, when it was announced at WrestleMania 32 in Dallas, Texas, that the company had officially dropped the Divas title and the term Diva as Lita unveiled a new white championship belt with a bright red face plate (evocative of All Japan Women’s signature red belt) and announced that the winner of the triple-threat match between Charlotte, Becky Lynch, and Sasha Banks would be recognized as women’s champion.

The change in terminology was widely praised and was seen as a change in mentality, presenting female wrestlers as athletes as opposed to prima donnas. The “butterfly belt” could finally be retired and replaced with a belt that looked similar to the world title, and not an unnecessarily feminized knockoff.

Trish Stratus expressed her support of the change a couple weeks later when she spoke at the 2016 CAC Reunion. “As seven-time WWE women’s champion, nothing makes me happier than seeing the women’s title come back. Of course, if someone wins it seven times, we may need to revisit that statement,” she said. “The new women’s championship signals the demise of the Divas championship. It’s pretty well known that I was never really into the term Diva. I felt like, ‘Hey, just call us what we are, women wrestlers.’ I worked my whole career for the right to be called a woman wrestler.”

Stephanie McMahon released a statement on the new designation. “This title belt represents the pinnacle of achievement, and that in WWE, it isn’t about gender, race, or ethnicity ― it is simply about being the best at what you do.”

Not everyone felt the same though. “It’s kind of like when you sell your first car and you’re like, ‘Oh, but I know you’re beaten and ugly, but I want you!’ That’s how I feel about the Divas championship,” said Nikki Bella.

Although the term Divas was kept for E!’s Total Divas, ring announcers are now saying that the following match is a “women’s division match.”

The three-way match was one of the most promoted acts for WrestleMania, to a level no other women’s match had been before. Due to excitement over the new title, the match was considered the match of the night by the vast majority of fans, a first in 32 years. The fans celebrated as well the very next night, during a segment with Charlotte and all the other women on Raw, by chanting in unison “women’s wrestling.”

“Talking about a revolution sounds like a whisper, as the old song says. It was just about going out there and doing our thing ― having stories where people get emotionally involved. It doesn’t matter if we’re women. It shouldn’t matter; it’s 2016,” said Becky Lynch in an interview with Sports Illustrated.

A few months later, WWE decided to split its roster between Raw and SmackDown. With the women’s champion exclusively wrestling on Raw, it was decided that SmackDown would have its own women’s championship, and the first champion was crowned on September 11, 2016.

Women wrestlers definitely have a better role now in WWE than ever before. It’s now safe to say that the women’s matches are not the bathroom breaks they once were. Fans are more generous and pay more attention to them. Of course, the flip side is that with better matches come higher expectations. With so many women being hired and groomed, one can only think that higher-ups in the company are behind these women and will not let the division die as it did in the mid-’80s or the early ’90s.

As far as NXT goes, it has become the place to be for women. Now a touring brand as well as a developmental promotion, NXT’s women’s matches are always among the most anticipated matches on the card. Although they are still hiring women from crossfit, bodybuilding bikini, and cheerleading competitions, it’s not unusual anymore to see many women who were weekend female warriors on the indies getting contracts or simply being invited to wrestle at tapings and such. Interestingly, in 2016, 30 percent of the NXT roster was made up of women, and they came from all over the world and from many different fields.

Australia had Billie Kay and Peyton Royce, Japan had Asuka, the U.K. had Nikki Cross (Nikki Storm), and the United States had Ember Moon (Athena). Fitness modeling had Alexa Bliss, cheerleading had Carmella, and bodybuilding had Dana Brooke. Even the second- and third-generation wrestlers were part of it. Nia Jax is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s cousin, and although they have not yet signed contracts with NXT, Tessa Blanchard (daughter of Tully, granddaughter of Joe, raised by Magnum T.A.) and Rachel Ellering (former Road Warriors and current NXT manager Paul Ellering’s daughter) are often used by the promotion. And if at one point in time the ring was a dangerous place for a woman who didn’t have a wrestling background, this time around, these women aren’t rushed in the ring and are actually properly trained by Sara Amato and Sarah Stock. In the summer of 2016, Brooke, Jax, Carmella, and Bliss were all promoted to the main roster, leaving room for other young prospects like Mandy Rose and Liv Morgan. NXT and WWE have also influenced other wrestling promotions such as Ring of Honor, which had its first all-women’s show in 2016 and is considering having a women’s championship for the first time.

Many consider the rise of Charlotte, Banks, Lynch, and Bayley the start of what is now called the women’s revolution. Others will mention Paige as the trendsetter, and some will say Natalya. At the end of the day, all these women deserve recognition as they have all stepped up to the plate when it was so important for them, and for the future of the division, to do so.

CHARLOTTE FLAIR

The entire world knew Ashley Fliehr’s father as the Man. What did that make her? The Daughter? The Little Girl? Maybe the Champion?

As it turned out, Ashley wanted to do more than ride along on the coattails of her celebrity dad, “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair. She had a few chapters she wanted to add to the Flair legacy herself.

The conventional wisdom regarding the Flair family was that Ric’s youngest son, Reid, would be the one to follow in his father’s Bruno Magli–wearing footsteps. A former AAU national champion in high school, Reid had trained under his father and Harley Race and had completed a tour of All Japan. He was being groomed for great things. But Reid was beset by legal problems and problems with drugs and alcohol. In March 2013, he was found dead of a heroin overdose in a Charlotte, NC, hotel room.

It was a tragic loss that devastated the family, one that largely overshadowed another important family development. Ashley, Ric’s youngest daughter with his ex-wife, Elizabeth, had been signed to a WWE developmental contract. A standout volleyball player in high school, she had graduated from college and worked as a personal trainer. Although she was around wrestling her entire life, it wasn’t until she was in her mid-20s that she considered trying it herself,

Wrestling as Charlotte (a nod to her hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina), she made her NXT television debut on July 17, 2013, just four months after Reid’s passing.

“I grew up always playing sports, but never in a million years did I think that I would become a WWE Diva,” she said in a 2015 interview on the PWI Podcast. “I was in Miami when the Four Horsemen were inducted [into the WWF Hall of Fame in 2012]. It was me, my little brother, Reid, and my dad, and we were sitting with [then director of talent relations] Johnny Laurinaitis at dinner. They were talking and joking, and they said, ‘You know, Ash, you should really just give it a go.’ At that point, I was just personal training and my little brother was an aspiring wrestler at the time. He was pretty much my motivation. I wanted to do it with him. So I said, ‘Sure, why not?’”

She said her father wouldn’t let her take the decision lightly, however. “He said, if you’re going to do this, you have to put your whole heart into it,” she recalled. “This is one huge opportunity and it’s not easy.”

Somewhat surprisingly, Flair didn’t have a hand in training his daughter; all of her training came through WWE’s developmental system and the Performance Center.

After nearly a year in NXT, she competed in ― and won ― an eight-woman tournament to fill the vacant NXT women’s title.

As champion, she unveiled a new twist on an old favorite, adding a high back bridge to her father’s signature figure-four leglock and dubbing it the figure-eight. She reigned as NXT women’s champion for almost eight months until dropping the belt to Sasha Banks. She was voted the 2014 Rookie of the Year by PWI voters, becoming only the third female to attain that distinction (following Madusa Miceli in 1987 and Veda Scott in 2012). Ric Flair won the same award in 1975.

About this edition

• Publisher: ECW Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1770413073
• ISBN 13: 9781770413078
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384