This week on Monday Night Raw, Charlotte defended her Raw Women’s Championship against The Boss, Sasha Banks. The two have a heated rivalry that goes back several months when Charlotte was the Divas Champion. Banks would win the championship from Charlotte on an episode of Raw only to lose it a few weeks later at SummerSlam. With a proper one-on-one match still owed to Banks, it would take place in the Staples Center, on the flagship WWE show.
Now typically, a Women’s Championship match would be in the middle of the show to keep fans interested until the main event. What made this match so important, however, is that it was the main event. You might be thinking, “Didn’t Trish Stratus and Lita main event Raw? Why is this so special?” Well, that was in 2004. As documented in the highly-recommended WWE Network special chronicling the Divas Revolution/Women’s Evolution, after Trish Stratus and Lita helped pave the way, it turned into a dead end.
For almost a decade, WWE turned back to the way women were used in the Attitude Era. Women were for show, and their matches (most of the time less than 5 minutes in length) were the bathroom break. The Diva Search led to a wave of models who learned on the job how to become Superstars, with only a few standouts. While this may have worked for Trish Stratus, who is one of the greatest Superstars in WWE history, it did not work for everybody.
When you think of women’s wrestling in WWE from 2005-2015, the greats of the time include Beth Phoenix, Natalya, Michelle McCool, Mickie James, and AJ Lee, among other solid in-ring workers. The only problem was that they never got enough time to show their true capabilities. Imagine the incredible matches that could take place now if AJ Lee and Beth Phoenix were given 20-25 minutes. Instead, they were pushed to the side, and their bikini/dance contests tended to be longer than their in-ring competition.
This started to change with the rebranding of NXT. Sara Amato, famed independent female wrestler, was hired as a trainer, and with the guidance of Amato and the confidence that Triple H had in the talent, NXT changed how WWE viewed women’s wrestling. Paige, Emma, Sasha Banks, Becky Lynch, Charlotte, and Bayley all played vital roles in changing from the epitome of the Diva era to where we are now.
While NXT understood why women’s wrestling was great, it took the main roster shows a little while longer to figure it out. The Divas Revolution started with three multi-woman teams: Team B.A.D. (Naomi, Tamina, and Sasha Banks), Team PCB (Paige, Charlotte, and Becky Lynch), and Team Bella (Nikki Bella, Brie Bella, and Alicia Fox). While there was a lot of talk, Monday Night Raw failed to back it up until WrestleMania 32.
WrestleMania 32 gave the main roster audience what NXT viewers have been experiencing ever since Paige and Emma had an amazing NXT Women’s Championship match. Sasha Banks, Becky Lynch, and Charlotte had one of the best women’s matches in history, and one of the best matches this year. They took each other to the limit, and made every single fan rethink what was possible with women’s wrestling.
That triple threat match at WrestleMania 32 was the spark explosion that the division needed. Charlotte’s reign as Women’s Champion would feature several 20+ minute long matches with Natalya, Becky Lynch, and Sasha Banks. The women would consistently give great matches that were uncommon for the division of yesteryear.
As fans, watching these women give it their all every night just to take their rightful spot on every card made you root for them and hope that they would outdo themselves every single time. For the most part, they always succeeded. While long matches are great, the competitive women strived for much more: becoming the main event.
Sasha Banks has main evented an NXT TakeOver special with Bayley in an Iron Woman match, which along with their epic clash in Brooklyn make for the best pair of women’s matches of all time. However, it was much harder to garner a main event spot on the main roster. That is, until this past Monday.
Being in the main event doesn’t just mean that you are the last match on the card. It means that you are the most important match on the card, and that the entire night is full of anticipation, waiting for that final bout. After years of hard work, Sasha Banks and Charlotte earned the trust of WWE to be that last match, that important match, that main event.
No matter who came out on top, both women were automatically winners in the history books. They took their rightful spot, blew the roof off of the building, and ended Raw to a standing ovation. The women in WWE are just one step away from achieving what they have been after for so long: main eventing a WWE Pay-Per-View. With the amazing women in this division, and the performance that was given on Raw, the Women’s Evolution is real, and it isn’t stopping for anything.
