However, the company’s reputation is unlikely to suffer. In fact, by the time you read this, Bad Blood, WWE’s latest PLE (Premium Live Event), would have come and gone. If I asked you to name the most important match on that show, you would undoubtedly volunteer Cody/Reigns VS Solo/Fatu or Drew VS Punk.
But if you think about it, Rhea VS Liv will have a bigger impact on WWE in the long run, assuming they follow the Judgement Day storyline to its logical outcome. Then again, none of us expects Paul Levesque (HHH) to take that particular gamble, and you can’t blame him.
Yes, a Dom VS Rhea fight would set the wrestling world on fire. But WWE does not do intergender wrestling. Then again, that is only true today. The company makes a lot of money by selling family-friendly shows to advertisers. That may change in 2025 when WWE debuts on Netflix. The streaming service is unlikely to hold them to the same strict standards as networks like Fox.
But that does not mean they will abandon the PG rating. And even if they do, is WWE ready to embrace intergender wrestling? Probably not.
This topic confounds casual fans. After all, wrestling is fake. The matches are scripted. If audiences are willing to watch films like Atomic Blonde, in which female characters fight and overcome male villains, surely they can suspend their disbelief long enough to enjoy a fake intergender WWE match.
But that mindset fails to appreciate the complexities associated with this topic. First of all, wrestling is a fake sport that tries very hard to masquerade as a real sport. And if female athletes won’t fight their male counterparts in real combat sports (such as MMA), it would not make sense for a fake combat sport like WWE to pit men against women.
Secondly, you have to consider the optics. Have you noticed that every violent encounter between men and women in WWE ends with the female wrestler humiliating the man? Rhea Ripley is always kicking, punching, low-blowing, and power-bombing her male colleagues. None of them ever retaliate.
Why? Because a man punching a woman on live television looks bad. This is the crux of the problem. Some people argue that intergender wrestling can work if you pair the female wrestler with a man she could realistically beat.
Rhea and Dom are a great example. Rhea is so physically imposing that no one bats an eye whenever she flings Dom’s pencil-thin body across the ring. A match between the two makes sense because you would not question Rhea’s ability to physically overcome Dom.
However, many proponents of intergender wrestling only support that match because Dom does not fight back when Rhea attacks him. The tide would swing against WWE if we ever saw Dom choking Rhea until she passed out.
Even if the live audience was open-minded enough to tolerate that depiction of violence against a female wrestler, various WWE superstars have vehemently opposed intergender wrestling during interviews. You must also consider the numerous domestic violence activists who would take WWE to task for supposedly promoting violence against women.
That does not even include the many abuse victims who follow WWE. Watching a man elbow a woman would probably trigger them, a fact hardcore wrestling fans may dismiss until those abuse victims begin petitioning advertisers to boycott WWE.
WWE cares too much about its profits to take that risk. Attitudes regarding male-on-female violence in fiction would have to change significantly before intergender wrestling becomes mainstream. Until that happens, you can use indie promotions like Lucha Underground to scratch your intergender wrestling itch.
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