Willow Nightingale discusses the state of AEW's women's division.
Throughout the company's existence, the AEW women's division has often been the subject of criticism. However, the division has made a lot of progress, and the addition of Mercedes Mone and other stars has helped continue the growth.
Speaking with Tim Battle and Eli on the Battleground Podcast, Willow Nightingale was asked to comment on the current state of the AEW women's division and what she would like to see change.
“I think we’ve come a really long way, just in the two years that I’ve been here. I think a lot of the issues initially with the women’s division were kind of stemmed in years and years and years of stigma against women in professional wrestling. I think it’s a lot deeper than just Tony [Khan] saying, ‘I want to give the girls time or I don’t.’ I think it’s much bigger than him just saying that because fans do ultimately have a little bit of say in what we do. This is our company, we’re gonna call the shots, we’re gonna do what we’re gonna do, and we’re gonna make them pay attention, whatever. But it’s hard when there’s years and years of stigma, of being like, ‘This is the bathroom break match,’ and people immediately tune out before they even give us a chance. Over the course of the five years that AEW has been running, you can see that we’ve been getting so much more time, more opportunities, more spots...you’ve seen, over time, that we’ve had more spots on the show, more opportunities, more time, and that’s because over the five years, we’ve forced people to pay attention to us. So with that, we get higher ratings, we get more people trusting us, we get more people paying attention, more equity, and so that is a large part in thanks to what we’ve done and the women who were at AEW before me have done as well. But thank you fans for tuning in. Keep doing that, keep supporting us, keep being very vocal online about how you want to see us in bigger positions. I can’t deny the fact that Mercedes coming to our company has helped us because she has. She’s been an advocate for all of us, all of the division," Nightingale said.
Nightingale went on to explain how progress was slow, in wrestling and beyond. She stated that it was nice to see that wrestling was making progress, and she reiterated that AEW's women's division had come a long way. Nightingale also expressed her hope to see women main-eventing more regularly and getting more matches on pay-per-views.
Again, progress is something that is very slow, that is something that is bigger than wrestling. When you look at all the social change that our country or different countries have gone through and will continue to go through, progress is slow. So to see that reflected in wrestling, something that already is kind of a little further back socially and progressively as the rest of the world, it’s nice to see us kind of catching and getting there. It’s been five years, which is not a long time, and we’ve already progressed so much. So I am excited and proud and happy to have been a part of that, but of course I would always love to see it more, for a women’s match to main event more regularly or more matches on pay-per-views and these big shows. But it’s happening, it’s happening. So just keep going with what’s working," Nightingale said.
Nightingale is set to face Kris Statlander in a Chicago Street Fight at AEW All Out. Check out Statlander's comments about the match here.
Click here to see what Willow Nightingale had to say about her recent trip to the United Kingdom for AEW All In week.
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