Ahead of tonight’s AEW All Out pay-per-view in Chicago, Will Nightingale spoke with the Battleground podcast. Willow will be facing Kris Statlander in a Chicago Street Fight.
Willow Nightingale gave her thoughts on the current state of the AEW Women’s division and if there is anything she would like to see changed:
“I think we’ve come a really long way just in the two years since I’ve been here. I think a lot of the issues initially with the women’s division kind of stemmed in years and years and years of stigma against women in professional wrestling. I think it’s a lot deeper than just Tony saying I want to give the girls time or I don’t. I think it’s much bigger than him just saying that because fans, you ultimately have a little bit of say in what we do. Like, this is our company. We’re going to call the shots. We’re going to do what we’re going to do and we’re going to make them pay attention and whatever, but it’s hard when there’s years and years and years of being like, this is the bathroom break match and people immediately tune out before they even give us a chance.”
“Over the course of the five years that AEW has been running, you’ve seen over time that we’ve had more spots on the show, more opportunities, more time, and that’s because over the five years, we’ve forced people to pay attention to us. With that, we get higher ratings. We get more people trusting us. We get more people paying attention, more equity. That is a large part thanks to what we’ve done and the women who were at AEW before me have done as well. Thank you fans for tuning in and keep doing that, keep supporting us, keep being very vocal online about how you want to see us in bigger positions. I can’t deny the fact that Mercedes coming to our company has helped us because she has. She’s been an advocate for all of us, all of the division.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Battleground podcast with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
