Intergender wrestling matches have recently come up in conversation again with Impact Wrestling and there headlining match of Sami Calihand defending the Impact title against Tessa Blanchard.
Now I’m not an Impact Wrestling fan but I don’t think to do this is some kind of desperate grab for attention either. This isn’t a random match with two nobodies and one of them happens to be a woman and one happens to be a man. This is a match with a guy who has shown he will wrestle women in “competitive” matches. If you remember Callihan’s run in Lucha Underground against a woman who has made a big name for herself and her family name of being joe Blanchard’s granddaughter and the daughter of Tully Blanchard. Besides all that and who she is related to, she has put on good matches in all the places she has been.
But more so than Callihan against Blanchard I am not against matches like that at all. If you have a woman wrestler that can put on a good match either on the mat and get technical or up in the air and fly around the ring then I don’t care if it’s a guys ass they kick or not. On the other hand, if a woman wants to challenge a guy to a match and the guy wins, That is oka! Nothing wrong with that either.
Now I’m not about making things unrealistic either. I’m not calling for a Brock Lesnar v/s Sumi Sakai type match. For that matter, I wouldn’t want to see someone the size of Chyna go up against someone the size one of the WWE Cruiserweights.
The WWE has never been a big fan of Intergender wrestling. Triple H has said that the idea was more of a gimmick that indy wrestling companies do. I don’t agree with that! Vince has never been that into Intergender wrestling and as far as I know, the WWE only did a handful of matches like that throughout history that didn’t involve something to do with Chyna or Harvey Wimplemen in a dress. The only time I remember doing a match like this with some seriousness in 2001 with Lita taking on Spike Dudley on Sunday Night Heat.
The WWE also had Trish Stratus bark like a dog on RAW one night and also let two reigning women’s champions walk out of the company so I have a hard time believing they have the same view of women as they do men.
But the WWE isn’t the only company to do Intergender wrestling. I already mentioned Lucha Underground and they even made Sexy Star their World Champion at one point. Not everyone was in favor of that but I thought it was a neat idea and worked well until she got cute in a woman’s match in Mexico and was blacklisted for her actions. History has a few of those kinds of matches too as Georgia had a couple of women compete in The Georgia Tag Team tournament in 1980.
The point is is that intergender wrestling is not exactly a new concept or something that small companies do to get attention. Those are matches that some people want to see. It is not an actual athletic event and some things are allowed to happen and not destroy the logic of the whole thing. It is perfectly believable if a woman wants to beat the crap out of a man during a match and reality would show that they are possible in doing that and not be presented as some sexual object to drool over.
