The Women's Evolution: How women's wrestling moved to the main event

The Women's Evolution

How women's wrestling moved to the main event. In just four years, WWE's women went from short matches billed as Divas to closing the show at WrestleMania 35 in front of a stadium crowd.

Becky Lynch in her ring gear in April 2019

Becky Lynch, April 2019: vindicatorprime, CC BY-SA 2.0

From Divas to Superstars

For years WWE called its women's division the Divas, and their matches were often short and squeezed between bigger segments. In 2015 that began to change. After Stephanie McMahon called for a revolution in the division, three standouts from the developmental brand NXT, Charlotte, Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks, arrived on the main roster on the July 13 episode of Raw.

At WrestleMania 32 in 2016, Hall of Famer Lita revealed a brand-new Women's Championship to replace the Divas title. The word Diva was retired, and the women became WWE Superstars like everyone else.

A run of firsts

The new stars got real championships to chase. Becky Lynch became the first SmackDown Women's Champion in September 2016, and the milestones kept coming. On January 28, 2018, in Philadelphia, WWE held its first women's Royal Rumble match, with 30 entrants under the same rules as the men. Asuka won it.

On the July 23, 2018, episode of Raw, Stephanie McMahon announced an all-women's event. Called Evolution, it took place on October 28, 2018, at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York, the first WWE event made up entirely of women's matches.

The Man

The breakout star was Becky Lynch. At SummerSlam in 2018 she attacked her friend Charlotte Flair and recast herself as an overlooked underdog who called herself "The Man." Fans loved her for it. She won the 2019 women's Royal Rumble and set her sights on Raw Women's Champion Ronda Rousey, a former UFC champion. When Flair won the SmackDown Women's title, the WrestleMania match became a three-way, winner-takes-all fight for both belts.

Closing the show

On April 7, 2019, at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, Lynch, Rousey and Flair became the first women to main event WrestleMania. Lynch rolled up Rousey for the pin, the first time Rousey had been pinned in WWE, and became the first woman to hold the Raw and SmackDown women's titles at the same time.

Today the winner of the women's Royal Rumble earns a championship match at WrestleMania, exactly like the men, a sign of how far the division has come.