Recently, popular indie wrestling star Faye Jackson had recently announced her retirement from wrestling after only 7 years of active in-ring competition after suffering a career ending injury during an intergender main event match at an indie wrestling show against a white male wrestler named Dan Barry.
Note: One legit reason as to why I dislike intergender wrestling matches is because of the fact that women like Faye Jackson often get seriously hurt and injured doing these matches. One female wrestler said in a interview last year that she used to be heavily involved in intergender wrestling matches until she heavily scaled back from doing them because she and her female wrestling friends were getting seriously hurt and injured all the time doing those matches.
Faye Jackson was one of the most charismatic and entertaining female wrestlers that I’ve ever seen that not only competed in numerous intergender wrestling matches, but have also had matches against popular female indie stars such as Marti Belle, Allysin Kay, & Thunder Rosa and even against legends like ODB.
Faye Jackson wasn’t the only female wrestler to retire from wrestling as Sadie Gibbs announced this past week that she had also retired after only 4 years of active in-ring competition. Women like Faye & Sadie who retire early from wrestling isn’t a new phenomenon because women’s wrestling legends in Lita and Trish retired in 2006 after only 6 years of active in-ring competition during the peak of their careers. And more recently, Taylor Wilde had made her return to Impact after a 10 year sabbatical from wrestling and during that time, she became a mother, professional firefighter, and a podcaster.
Also recently, Mickie James talked about how she was pressured by sexist corporate white men in WWE to retire after she suffered a torn ACL injury two years ago, but kept pushing for ideas that fell on deaf ears and even pushed for the idea of an all women’s show in WWE only for this sexist white guy behind the scenes tell her “They’re never going to do it. Ever. Women’s wrestling doesn’t really make money. The Women’s EvolutionPPV - the lowest-rated PPV ever in the history of WWE PPVs. I get what you’re trying to do, but I don’t understand why you’re fighting so hard for it. You should just kind of like play the cards you’re kind of dealt, and then see if there’s a way to incorporate that within a different show rather than fight for it to be its own show.’
Let’s be honest: The real reason why WWE deliberately refuses to do an all-woman’s weekly show is not only due to their historically negative & sexist views of women and women’s wrestling on the WWE main roster as seen by the negative & sexist depictions of women during The Attitude & Ruthless Aggression Eras, but they are legitimately concerned that the wrestling fangirls especially those that only watch for the women will not only stop watching RAW and Smackdown, but they probably will also stop watching NXT as well if this idea ever comes into fruition.
Women on average generally have much shorter lifespans than men particularly white men in professional wrestling because many guys, particularly white guys wrestle for more than 15 to 20 years on average while many women in wrestling wrestle for about 5 to 10 years on average. Many women retire from wrestling early for numerous reasons such as starting work in other fields outside of wrestling, to settle down and be mothers, to potentially become a podcaster to talk about their wrestling career and things that we didn’t know about them outside of wrestling, or just enjoy life to the fullest.
The Conclusion - The sad truth about women in wrestling is that they get vilified for wrestling in their 30s and 40s while men particularly white men are glorified for wrestling in their 40s & even 50s. That’s an offensive double standard that needs to end.
By Kwame Shakir
