Growing up in the late 1990s, when I started watching wrestling, there was hardly any black women on TV and if there were, they would only get used to put over white female wrestlers especially blonde bombshells like Sable, Terri, or Tori.
Nowadays, what we’re witnessing is a renaissance of black women in modern day wrestling that hasn’t been seen since the 1950s when Ethel Johnson, Babs Wingo, Marva Scott, and other black women were huge draws and often sold out shows that they wrestled in while also having to deal with the extreme prejudiced attitudes from racist whites during that time especially in The Old Jim Crow South as shown in the documentary called “Lady Wrestler” which I encourage y’all to check out if you haven’t seen it.
The first generation of black female wrestlers such as Ethel Johnson, Babs Wingo, Marva Scott paved the way for future generations of black female wrestlers such as Former WWE Women’s Champions Jacqueline and Jazz, Former Divas Champion Alicia Fox, Former NWA Women’s and Impact Knockouts Champion Awesome Kong to even the huge flux of black female talent that’s absolutely killing it in modern day wrestling such as Former Smackdown and Current Raw Women’s Champion Bianca Belair, Current WWE Women’s Tag Champions Naomi and Sasha Banks, The Inaugural and Current TBS Champion Jade Cargill, Former 2x Impact Knockouts Tag Team Champion and Current Impact Knockouts World Champion Tasha Steelz, The Current Longest Reigning Inaugural Pan-African World Diaspora World Champion Trish Adora, Big Swole, Ember Moon, and other black women out there killing it on the popular U.S. indie scene.
To me personally, the black female excellence in wrestling really reached its peak with the iconic, influential, and historic main event match between Bianca Belair and Sasha Backs at WrestleMania 37 Night 1. A match that I have given great praise to in an I wrote last year called “Bianca Belair vs Sasha Banks - An Historic Main Event During The Greatest Night In Black Wrestling History At WrestleMania 37 Night 1”
And speaking of Bianca Belair, she did something that no other woman before her let alone The 4 Horsewomen can say that they ever did which was have back-to-back great matches at WrestleMania. She’s now responsible for having The 2 Best Women’s Matches In WrestleMania History w/ Sasha last year and recently with Becky.
I would also like to give a special shoutout to all the black women who are also thriving and killing it in the wrestling media space like Jaychele Nicole, Jenna from Mixed Tag Show Podcast, Lola Bluu, Those Wrestling Girls, Sade from DDT Divas, Janelle from Jobber Tears Podcast, Stephanie from Wrestling In Color, Queen K, Candace Cordelia from PWI, T.K. Trinidad from Women’s Wrestling Talk, etc.
The Conclusion - Seeing black women thrive and succeeding in an industry that was for decades denying them opportunities and also the chance to prove that they can not only be draws and have good matches, but also main event shows especially “premium live events” like WrestleMania.
I agree with Seeing black women thrive and succeeding in an industry that was for decades denying them opportunities and also the chance to prove that they can not only be draws and have good matches, but also main event shows especially “premium live events” like WrestleMania.
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