Women’s Hardcore Matches are Better Than Men’s
I’m not sorry – they just are.
One of the biggest positives and sought-after goals in Western Pro Wrestling over the last 10-15 years is the movement for parity between men’s and women’s wrestling. For representation in the number of matches on the card, the length of those matches, the important stories and (gasp) – the ability to have violent stipulation matches? …
To BLEED?!
Everyone knows women don’t bleed! Despite the wills of the cartel of sexist old men who ruled mainstream wrestling for the preceding decades, parity between sexes has been the direction that we as fans have demanded, it’s the direction we’re going. TNA were ahead of the curb on putting their Knockouts division in no disqualification matches and steel cages on Pay-Per-View, but WWE as the effective monopoly of Western mainstream wrestling avoided featuring women in kinds of personal, violent feuds – and subsequent blow-off matches that equal their tone.
Enter All Elite Wrestling
AEW’s women's division did not get off to the best of starts, that’s a story for another day, but the true turning point for what the division started with Dr. Britt Baker’s heel turn – and a happy little accident of a broken nose during a Pandemic-era match with Hikaru Shida on Dynamite. The visual of Baker laughing maniacally as the blood dripped from her nose, staining those dentist-perfect pearly whites, it was instantly iconic and on a T-shirt. What came next was no accident.
Britt and Thunder Rosa’s Lights Out match the next year was one of the bloodiest, most violent women’s matches that fans who grew up cringing their way through bra & panties matches (whilst hoping their parents didn’t walk in) had ever seen.
And it fucking ruled!
The crocodile tears, the pearl clutchers were out in force to decry the barbarity, but it didn’t matter. We’ve seen something most hadn’t seen.
And we wanted more!
You see, I used the word ‘parity’ and that fundamentally ignores that there are things that women can do in a wrestling ring that men could never dream of. The intensity that Rosa and Britt brought to their Lights-Out match, the hatred, the viciousness, it was a level above what most men’s No-DQ matches could muster. A gimmick match isn’t about the number of tables you break, how big the velvet bag full of tacks is, it’s about a feeling. It’s about the crowd understanding that these wrestlers hate each other, and that a regular pro-wrestling match simply can’t contain the violence they have in store. Women wrestlers have proven time and time again that they can communicate a true blood feud to a crowd more intensely than the boys.
AEW followed-up on Britt/Rosa with some of the highest quality street fights of our era and buckets of claret to go with them. Tay Melo and Anna Jay vs Penelope Ford and The Bunny was Allie’s messy scream queen performance. One that would only be topped when Tay-Jay faced Willow Nightingale and Ruby Soho the next year, in a match that saw Ruby have the greatest moment and strongest visual of her career. She left enough blood around the entire ringside area to make Alice Cooper squeamish.
She looked like a fucking badass.
She was a fucking badass. Willow continued her hardcore form by having an absolute classic against Kris Statlander at ALL OUT 2024 and was probably the best worked match of any I’ve mentioned so far. These matches were intense, visceral, and the performances of the wrestlers involved earned the blood that followed.
Every story needs an ending
‘Timeless’ Toni Storm vs Mariah May is the best told story in AEW’s history. Only Hangman’s ongoing arc can ever hope to match it. No two wrestlers have ever proved the point I’ve been making like these two. Everything about their story was intense, in a uniquely feminine way. The tension, both sexual and violent is something I’ve never seen in wrestling before, and we may never see its like again.
Mickie James and Trish Stratus had a rivalry built around a similar obsessed fan story, but it was never given this amount of time to brew into the perfect package. The comedy, the pacing, the betrayal, every second of screentime perfectly served the story being told, and meticulously built to the kind of climax only this rivalry could be capable of.
You’ve probably already guessed why I brought you here now, AEW Revolution 2025.
The Hollywood Ending.
One of the most personal, hate-filled, vicious yet beautiful displays of violence I’ve ever seen committed to canvas. And they certainly committed plenty of themselves to the canvas. Toni and Mariah needed less than 13 minutes to have the greatest match on one of the strongest in-ring PPVs ever. A card that included Kenny Omega vs Konosuke Takeshita and an equally brutal cage match between Will Ospreay and Kyle Fletcher. Serves Kenny and Will right to be the ones having to follow a transcendently good wrestling match for once. There was blood, there was glass, there was story.
I’m not a fan of the word ‘cinema’ as it relates to pro-wrestling. I think it’s used too often to defend meanderingly long in-ring promo segments, and outdated, overbooked matches that lack in substance. But this… this wasn’t that. This was the only wrestling match and rivalry that truly deserves to be called “Cinema”
The visual of Toni laying over the practically deceased body of Mariah May, filled with equal parts relief and melancholy as the words ‘The End’ were displayed on the video screens was powerful – not only because it paid homage to the Hollywoodland-era theme of this rivalry, but because this truly felt like what all of these hardcore matches in AEW’s women’s division have been building to. They’ve all been groundbreaking for what we in the West are used to seeing on TV wrestling, but a true multi-act, personal feud over the World Championship is the perfect opportunity for AEW to show that the Women’s World Championship is equally as important, and as capable of even better stories than those that revolve around the men’s title.
I’ve long had this suspicion that I feel something more after these matches than I did after similar men’s gimmick matches. I could never put my finger on why. In theory they’re all doing most of the same moves, following a lot of the same structure that many modern hardcore matches do these days, including a token table spot.
I hate the ‘we want tables’ chant.
What made these women’s matches feel a level above?
It’s something real, it’s emotion. You can tell that these wrestlers felt like they needed to make it special, that they were fighting for the credibility of their division. That’s where so much of this extra intensity was coming from. AEW and wrestling in general isn’t there yet, there still need to be more women’s main events and more matches on PPV cards. We’re going in the right direction but we still have a long way to go. That’s why I think it’s so important that instead of solely focusing on parity, we should celebrate these matches for how they’re amazing in ways that only women’s matches can be.
Women can do violence on a whole different level. I hope that we see more stories like ‘All About Mariah’, I hope we see more Hollywood Endings. But until then, the gold standard is black and white, – oh and a whole lot of red!
Art by Neon Ghost