Robbie’s Top 20 WrestleMania Moments – 19. The Term "Divas" Is Abolished As The Women Steal The Show

Sup yo? If you’re unaware, I’m doing a blog per day leading up to WrestleMania where I talk about my personal favorite 20 Mania moments of all time. Keep in mind I’m 18, so a lot of my picks will be on the more recent side.

19. The Term “Divas” Is Abolished As The Women Steal The Show

For many, many years, wrestling fans were conditioned to treat the women on the show as either eye candy or a piss break. I pretty much grew up in the era of this going down, and always wondered what happened to the Trish Stratus’ and Lita’s, tearing the house down in RAW main events. Why is the women’s championship a big pink and purple butterfly? Why are all of their storylines focused around boy trouble? Why are their matches ending in 2-3 minutes?

Quite simply, Vince and the powers that be just didn’t think much of women as athletes or wrestlers. To the company, these females were eye candy and a piss break. While the likes of Paige, Sasha Banks, Bayley, Charlotte, and Becky Lynch regularly put on match of the night on major shows for NXT, The Bella Twins and AJ Lee were still involved in 2-3 minute rollup matches, and the fans had enough. #GiveDivasAChance was a hashtag that spawned after a 30 second match on RAW and was the #1 trend worldwide for over 24 hours, leading “Vince” to tweet…

Definitely a “Holy shit!” moment. Vince is listening to and acknowledging fans! Sasha Banks, Charlotte, and Becky Lynch were called up to the main roster for a weird few months of faction warfare, but when that dust settled, a WrestleMania match began to form. Charlotte Flair would be defending her Divas Championship against Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch. We, as fans, were finally getting what we wanted, and ultimately, it was just equality. Before the show, Lita unveiled a Women’s Championship, and the (derogatory) term “Diva” was dropped then and there.

All three women got huge WrestleMania entrances, and certainly lived up to the hype. The match undoubtably stole the show and was actually the only true highlight from WrestleMania 32. Charlotte retained her title, taking some air out of the building, but because at the end of this Women’s Championship match, 100,000+ were on their feet applauding, it makes my Top 20 list. While Stephanie McMahon takes all the credit she can for the changing of the guard in women’s wrestling, she can never take away what was accomplished on April 3rd, 2016.

Catch up on the list:

20. Butterbean Knocks Bart Gunn Into Another Dimension