This Sunday at Wrestlemania, WWE Divas Champion Charlotte will face Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks in a three-way title match that would have served as the logical narrative bookend to the concept that was the Divas Revolution. The payoff of these three facing off against one another on the biggest stage in professional wrestling, having climbed from humble beginnings and overcome negative stigmatization in a male-dominated industry to achieve at the highest level imaginable, would have been both the ultimate testament to the success of the Divas Revolution as a long-term storyline and the proper punctuation on the statement that WWE had reached a new era in the presentation of its female talent.
Or at least it would have been were it not for the countless fatal decisions made along the way that ultimately lead to its failure. Had WWE’s faith in branding and hashtagging been enough to sustain through incomprehensible storytelling, numerous dreadful on-screen segments (including no fewer than two disastrous episodes of Miz TV), far too many unexplained and illogical changes in the heel-face dynamic, an overwhelming sense of purposelessness, and the tasteless invoking of Reid Fliehr’s name for the sole purpose of cheap heat, the Divas Revolution concept may very well have survived to see Wrestlemania.
But because so many mistakes made it revolting more often than revolutionary, and because WWE’s commitment to the concept seemed to run only as deep as seeing a buzzword trend worldwide on Twitter a few nights a week, the #DivasRevolution is long dead.
When Charlotte, Sasha, and Becky step into the ring on Sunday, they will represent all that remains of that misbegotten, in-name-only revolution. Fortunately, they were the only components of it that ever mattered at all.
The title match at Wrestlemania this Sunday is not at all about the Divas Revolution, despite any possible attempts from WWE commentators to inform the audience otherwise. Rather, it will be above all else the crowning moment for three of the major players of the very real sea change that has been going on for far longer than a hashtag-revolution. It will be a career-defining highlight for Charlotte, Sasha, and Becky, whose work in NXT between 2013-2015 with each other and the likes of Bayley, Natalya, Paige, and Emma was a major catalyst for an actual change in that audience’s perception of women’s wrestling.
Given their immense collective and individual potential, this should be far from the last big moment these three women will experience at a Wrestlemania.
What this match could ultimately prove to be is one that may help direct the course of women’s wrestling in WWE for years to come, and one that could help pave the way for other women to enjoy their own much-deserved moments in the spotlight at that level. Someone like Bayley, for example, who has a very real potential to become one of the company’s top money-makers, full stop. The response of the live crowd, and the social response of the worldwide viewing audience, could create enough tangible evidence to convince those who may still believe otherwise that the future of WWE’s female performers is in emphasizing in-ring prowess and performance over aesthetics and sex appeal.
If rumors of a new WWE Women’s Championship being revealed on the Raw following Wrestlemania prove true and result in the long overdue abandonment of the obnoxious “Divas” brand, then the match between Charlotte, Becky, and Sasha may just be the final, decisive nail in a coffin that they have all worked so hard to seal.
Or, perhaps, it won’t prove to be that at all. Perhaps the notion of sweeping change in WWE’s philosophy regarding women taking place in just eight months’ time is as ill-fated as thinking that CM Punk’s 434-day championship reign or Daniel Bryan’s Wrestlemania triumph would turn back decades of big-man fetishism. Even today, with Charlotte, Sasha, and Becky on the precipice of taking their well-earned Wrestlemania moments, the company still seems adamant to draw blood from the stone that is Eva Marie, someone who epitomizes what WWE thinks of when it uses the malapropos term “Diva.”
The fact that the expectation was that she would be cheered when she appeared on Raw (in Brooklyn, of all places) reinforces the idea of a considerable disconnect between WWE’s beliefs and reality. Slotting Eva in as the surprise 10th participant in the pre-show tag match doesn’t quite portend that she would one day be given a run with the championship (though her reemergence on the main roster certainly makes it seem no less plausible), but it also doesn’t dissuade from the idea that there are still those in the company who see a woman’s primary contribution to the product as being her ability to look good in as little clothing as possible.
Regardless of what the match means or doesn’t mean for the big picture of WWE today and moving forward, it can be said with a fair degree of certainty what it means to the three performers involved: quite simply, everything.
Charlotte vs. Becky Lynch vs. Sasha Banks will be culmination of years of tireless effort and struggle; in one instant, together in front of the largest audience WWE has ever drawn, everything that they have sacrificed along the way will have been worth it. For as much as the concept of the Wrestlemania moment has become another in WWE’s arsenal of trite branding terms, it will be just that for the three, and it will be a moment well deserved.
Perhaps given the uncertainty of seemingly all things creative in WWE at present, it is simply the best course of action to not worry about whether this match can atone for the failures of the Divas Revolution or set the table for the future of the women’s division. It is unlikely that Charlotte, Sasha, or Becky will be thinking in such lofty terms this Sunday or in the days leading up to it. They will probably not be concerning themselves with starting a movement, causing a revolution, or sparking long-term change.
Instead, they are much more likely to be focused on a single moment. On appreciating it, and on seizing it. On doing their utmost to steal the show, just as they have in NXT so many times before. With their talent and drive, there is no reason to believe that they cannot deliver on that promise once again, despite the amplified lens. Given their history of pulling off show-stealing performances, it is unlikely that most fans will leave their seats until the finish if only so that they, too, can share in that moment with them. That, in and of itself, speaks to the level of change they have helped affect.
Before the #DivasRevolution hashtag, there was #GiveDivasAChance. It sprung directly from indignation at women being given so little to work with compared to their male counterparts, rooted in the idea that female wrestlers deserve, at the least, an equal opportunity to show the world what they could do in the ring. This Sunday at Wrestlemania, Charlotte, Sasha Banks, and Becky will presumably be empowered and enabled to go out in front of 85,000 fans — many of whom will be invested in the match to at least some extent – and tell a story.
They should, and likely will, be given every tool available to put on a blow-away match in front of millions of people around the globe. It is fair to say that, despite WWE doing seemingly everything it could to get in its way, women’s wrestling is being given its chance at long last. It would be more appropriate, however, to say that it is an opportunity well earned.
