We Lost the 9th Wonder of The World

After yesterday’s post I was deeply shocked that the first thing I saw when I woke up this morning was one of my colleagues asking me if I was going to come into work today following the news of Chyna’s death. I quickly checked her Instagram, which I mildly stalk, and was devastated that she had indeed passed. At this point they are not sure what happened and I will not speculate. I only hope that she died peacefully and knew on some level that she was loved by many. I also did go into work by the way. 

I think the one word that sums up my feelings on Chyna’s death is anger. She deserved so much more recognition than she got from the WWE for everything she contributed. I am glad that Stephanie McMahon tweeted about her death and called her a pioneer. Chyna spent so much of her life in recent years trying to mend fences with the WWE, be acknowledged by them and inducted into the Hall of Fame. It seems bitter sweet that they are only now acknowledging her contributions and star power. I hope that they induct her into the Hall of Fame in 2017. I feel like I may riot otherwise.

Chyna pictured below with her Women's Championship belt and below that she is pictured with the WWE IC Championship. She was the first, and so far the only,  woman to ever hold that belt.

What Culture has done a fantastic job paying tribute to her and her career today and I will include the link to their video Thank You Chyna because they say it all so perfectly. I am so beyond blessed that I was able to meet her when I did. Chyna had an incredible influence on my life and dazzled me with how strong women could be. There will never be another Chyna. #ChynaHallofFame2017

This Feminist's Guilty Pleasure

I thought to shake off my rust in blogging I'd return to the root of why I started blogging; feminism. This led me to thinking about my guilty pleasure as a feminist. I think it is time that I confess to the masses, I LOVE Pro-wrestling, specifically WWE's brand. This has always shocked everyone who has ever known me. And while there are some serious black spots on WWE's history, as far as their treatment and use of female talent goes, I cannot help but love the overall product just the same. And I was overjoyed when they announced at Wrestlemaina that they are returning back to the Women's Championship and have retired the Diva's championship. The women they have wrestling today, for the most part, are seriously badass wrestlers NOT the atrocious "we never learned how to wrestle or never watched it growing up" divas we had been subjected to for almost a decade (With a few exceptions like Natalya who struggled through having matches with opponents who didn't know what they were doing).

 Thankfully women like her soldiered through and saved the division. Even the Bella Twins learned how to wrestle properly. And that is why that ridiculous Brat's accessory of a belt had to be replaced by one that looks respectable. Pictured above is Natalya with the old Women's Championship and the Diva's belt- I'm not kidding. That's the Diva belt. But let me backtrack a little.

Growing up I wanted to be one of four women, Xena Warrior Princess, Cher, Buffy and Chyna. Now two of those women are fictional and have aspects of superhuman abilities. And well, I also cannot sing. So by process of elimination I realized I could aim to be like Chyna who during the Attitude Era of wrestling was seriously paving the way for women in wrestling. She held the Intercontential Championship and was in the Royal Rumble. She fought the guys and looked like she could do some serious damage. I was in awe of this real life Xena. I bought her fitness VHS with the hopes of having some serious guns like her (Side note: Chyna Fitness is probably still the best workout I have ever had in my life with kickboxing being a close second). Chyna’s time was cut short in the WWE by personal issues, bad things happen when your live in boyfriend starts dating and then marries the boss daughter. And from there Chyna wound up on celebrity rehab, porn and being abused by fellow wrestler X-poc(whom I always disliked and this gave me proof positive that he is indeed an a-hole). All of that effectively broke my fangirl heart. I met Chyna a few months ago at an autograph signing. I am a 28 year old woman and I nearly burst into tears when I met her because meeting ones idols is INTENSE. I managed not to cry but could barely spoke for fear of embarrassing myself. How do you tell someone “OMG I WANTED TO BE YOU!?!?” without sounding like an insane person as an adult? You can’t. I will say that she was incredibly nice, and she signed my book on the outside and the inside and took a picture with me. And when I say she was nice, I mean she signed my book that was from her time with the WWE and she has very negative feeling towards the company for their treatment of her when she was let go and after. She was also so much smaller than I thought she would be. I have come to find that wrestlers usually are. I definitely just see them as larger than life and so meeting them is so weird size wise.

With Chyna gone there were still a variety of badass such as Jacqueline, Ivory, Trish, Lita, Molly Holly and Victoria who kept the womens division interesting and provided fantastic matches on the level of their male counterparts. Then something happened. These women started retiring or were let go from the company and the women that replaced them were not trained wrestlers. They were simply there to be sexy and when they got into the ring it was painful to watch. Women's wrestling hit a serious decline and during this period I really stopped watching because even the woman who was left, Lita, what they turned her career into was sickening to me(ring side TA-no wrestling). I’d still catch matches and watch the big PPVs, the men in the WWE were still highly entertaining (most of the time) with talents like John Cena, Randy Ortin, Daniel Bryan, Y2J, Edge, Booker T, Kane, Taker, HHH, CM Punk, Dolph Ziggler and Wade Barret just to name a few. I am actually wearing a John Cena shirt as I write this and to all the Cena haters out there, I got two words for ya: SUCK IT. Those 5 moves of doom are entertaining as hell. Moving on.
We have since seen a revamping of the women's division due to NXT and perhaps HHH and Stephanie, although I am not 100% sure on that. Stephanie was a former Women’s Champion herself and I always enjoyed it when she would wrestle and still do. She’s literally a billionaire and did not need to learn how to wrestle but she did and in my opinion she does it well. Her brother Shane O’Mac even with 10 years of ring rust is still one of my favorites to watch in the ring. I don’t know if it’s that little dance/skip he does down to the ring or the crazy ass shit he is willing to do (see match with Kurt Angle where he is thrown through glass and almost legitimately breaks his neck-it was supposed to be made of sugar glass but someone messed up and put the real deal there and Shane nearly died as a result especially since he insisted on being suplexed through until the real Plexiglas broke #badass). I also believe the bring about of the PG era helped women's wrestling. It’s not PG to have a sex celebration, bra and panties matches or whatever other disgusting ideas were thought up. Another side note: when I watched wrestling as a kid, I would do so with my Dad. Ever watch a bra and panties match with your Dad when you’re 13? No? Well I have. It wasn’t exactly a bonding moment. More like neither of us knew what to do and it was awkward as hell. Thanks again Vince, I’ll be sending you my therapy bill. Also is it any wonder that my Dad did not want me to be a pro-wrestler after that?
I saw my first live event when I was 17. I went with a car full of my guy friends and I will never forget it for a few reasons. 1. The backseat did not have any seat belts so it was decided that I would sit in the middle with the two fattest guys(who were very overweight) so that if we crashed hopefully I would be so squished I wouldn’t fly out the front window and I’d have padding on either side of me. I don’t think that would have worked for the record, but I didn’t care. I was about to see the WWE live! A little life threatening danger was deemed totally worth it.  I was about to have a dream come true. 2. We got to the arena in about 20 minutes because we were running late- due to one of the guys for the record- the arena was 45 mins away if you went the speed limit. I know I am lucky to be writing this story right now. The arena was in Binghamton NY, Brooms County Arena. I have been to several shows since then and at different arenas and I will say nothing compares to the energy that I saw that night. I remember when Kane’s pyro hit and I felt the heat of it all the way up in the nosebleeds. Pure magic.
In college I actually found one woman who was a fan as well and who shared my Hardy boyz love. #besttagteamever! I have since met them and they are as nice, if not nicer than I thought they would be. One of the sad things for me was during the Attitude Era it was definitely the golden age of tag teams, which means it declined with the women's division. We saw things that had never been done before and the talent was off the charts. TLC matches baby! I haven’t seen a decent TLC match in I can’t remember how long. But honestly how can you compete with that stuff? Unless you are Y2J and Chris Benoit…and then there’s that. Benoit.
I was a HUGE Benoit fan. His in ring ability was mind blowing. The Wrestlemaina when both he and Eddy won titles made me cry and was such a wonderful moment. That’s the Benoit I knew as a fan. Then the news broke that he had killed his wife, son and himself. My heart stopped. Too many concussions and the very serious effect they have on the human brain took his sanity along with all of their lives. The WWE banned the use of his name and all of his matches were hidden away. I understood not referencing him but taking away his matches I did not agree with because the wrestlers he worked with didn’t deserve that. Y2J specifically had some of the best matches of his career with Benoit and I wanted to be able to see them damn it. I had them on VHS thankfully and now the WWE has made them available again on the Network. By the way if you have the Network, watch Swerved. You won’t regret it. I don’t think he should ever be inducted into the Hall of Fame. I agree to with Chris Jericho’s stance on this. Fantastic wrestler but what he did at the end of his life does disqualify him and would taint the Hall. It’s also unfortunate that his wife Nancy, who was in the wrestling business, isn’t talked about either even though it’s not her fault her husband murdered her.
Wrestling is often very problematic on issues of race, gender, sexuality and religion. I know this. I’ve seen it. I’ve touched on some of it -barely- here. Has some headway been made? Yes. Do they still have a long way to go? Give me a Hell Yeah! But nothing is perfect and the problems I see in wrestling I see in other entertainment like tv shows, movies and books. Remember WWE is basically a soap opera with body slams. There are story lines and yes the results and matches are “rigged” no one, except small children believes it is real in that manner. But what they inflict on their bodies is very real and unlike other sports (yes I am calling it a sport-bite me) you can see a much wider population represented. There is almost someone for everyone to relate to. And what some of these people can do with their bodies is literally beautiful-the high flying moves that some superstars do are beyond graceful. Beautiful is the only way I can even think to describe it.

I plan on writing several more blogs on wrestling and feminism but I wanted to give a general background and I apologize because I know this is all over the place so if you’ve made it this far thank you. I think that writing about wrestling as a fan who is also a feminist is important because it isn’t something I have seen before. And if you are a feminist who is curious check out matches that have Natalya, Charlotte, Sasha, Becky Lynch, Naomi and Tamina in them for current. Or for old school Chyna, Jackie, Ivory and Molly Holly.  Serious BAMF. Wrestling is my guilty pleasure, always has been.  Fan girl out!