Former WWE Divas Champion and SmackDown General Manager Paige spoke with ‘Gulf News’ to promote the release of Fighting With My Family.
This is where she spoke about the evolution of the way that WWE books their female talents. She brought up how in her mind, it was not WWE who was holding back the women stars from being just like the men regarding the work rate but instead, it was the fans for not taking them seriously.
“It was never WWE holding the women back,” Paige stated. “It was the fans not taking them seriously. They wanted to see more of the male characters many years ago. It was a male dominated sport. When I first started, there were only five women there. It was a struggle but WWE just believed in us. When I got into the ring, I wanted to prove to the fans that girls were capable of having good matches and sometimes, even better. That was kind of my mission from the get go. Now there’s obviously a revolution.
Paige has since taken to her official Twitter account where she clarified her statement by writing the following:
“Ok if you read it. I said many years ago. Not now. Even up to a few years ago certain places we would wrestle in, the fans in big arenas would chant boring to the girls or start the wave or for years chanted “we want puppies.” So it was absolutely a mixture of both. Absolutely yes. Fans back then would call us toilet breaks. It was only when the girls, the female superstars took it upon themselves to change the way anyone perceived us. Aj, the bellas, myself and the WWE four horsewomen all the superstars wanted to create that change. I know but people are sensitive these days. In reality what I said was it’s not all on WWE. Up until a few years ago women didn’t have the support from a lot of people.”
https://twitter.com/RealPaigeWWE/status/1097547299859779584
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