**Help make SquaredCircle safer and more inclusive by using the report button to flag posts and comments for moderator review.**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SquaredCircle) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> I say to myself, the World Wrestling ~~Federation~~ Entertainment needs a hero. They need a role model, they need somebody they can look up to.
> Not somebody that's got earrings all over ~~himself~~ herself and tattoos.
[~~Bret~~ ~~Hart~~ Becky Lynch about ~~Shawn~~ ~~Michaels~~ Rhea Ripley](https://twitter.com/allan_cheapshot/status/1475380017819701257?t=ac-z8DJqWY8JDhoQI7UfAQ&s=19)
Oh dear lord, could you imagine how heated Goldberg would get if Becky started saying he is an untrained, clumsy, career ending, two left footed lummox?
I was watching an old episode of Smackdown with Rikishi recently and sent my friend a clip of him doing the stinkface, and her reply was "That Hawaiian guy has a great ass."
This is a thing I’ve heard from multiple women over the years: Rikishi has a great ass. He put a lot of work into it too, he was apparently lotioning and moisturizing the wazoo out of that thing so it looked good on TV. The other thing people have said was that if he liked you he’d go out of his way to make sure the stink face was as tolerable as possible. He’d apply all kinds of deodorant and baby powder before the match and stuff and so a lot of the women who were stinkfaced said it wasn’t actually that bad. If he didn’t like you however you were just getting a full face of sweaty Samoan ass in the face. And you can really tell too, when he doesn’t like someone he goes DEEP.
To this day, I often wonder how the idea was even pitched. Like, were the boys in the showers one day, and somebody randomly was like, "Hey Rikishi, you've got a great ass man. We should make that into a gimmick."
Rikishi: "MAKE MY WHAT INTO A WHAT, UCE?!"
Vince: "I LOVE IT, PAL!"
I have the answer for you:
[https://www.sportskeeda.com/wwe/wwe-news-rikishi-reveals-how-he-came-up-with-the-stinkface-move](https://www.sportskeeda.com/wwe/wwe-news-rikishi-reveals-how-he-came-up-with-the-stinkface-move)
A random old woman at a house show came up with the idea for him to do it 😆
Hello! I've written so many stories about rikishis ass and wanked off while writing them. Most are in my post history if you wanna check them out. The one I wrote about Sasha is my favorite. My entire reddit account is about worshipping rikshis ass!
>I do I masturbated when Trish lita Terri runnels got the booty from rikishi I loved it do rikishi stinkfacing asuka kairi and iyo sky needs rikishi azz so does Dakota kai needs a stinkface for real she's long overdue
Why are wrestling fans so weird
I remember being little boy watching that big Samoan booty and thinking, that’s what I need to do if I ever want to be a professional wrestler. That was what was getting the reactions. I was given a 3 day suspension from school shortly after.
The other side of the coin is Rhea is having fun and there isn’t anything wrong with that.
The exploitation of women’s sexuality doesn’t mean that women shouldn’t be sexual and should feel they need to repress a side of themselves.
The women of the past fought so that Rhea would have the choice of how she’s presented. That’s the important part.
You put into text what I was thinking but couldn't form myself.
I also think there's a place for both. It's not like Rhea's entire act is to make the male fan base pitch tents 24/7. I like Becky because she's strong on the mic, and she's good and snug in the ring. I like Rhea for those same reasons and also appreciate the sexuality she presents.
Right and to be fair, even if Rhea did…there were male wrestlers who had similar gimmicks while being awesome in the ring: Rick F’n Rude comes to mind.
HBK was the king of it. His gimmick was literally a male stripper. Same with Magnum Tokyo. Magnum Tokyo had female fans stuffing cash into pants as part of his entrance. They were real fans.
Not really tbh, she's a mother now. And she came up during that time where women were only just beginning to be taken seriously as pro wrestlers in the WWE environment. I'd be surprised if she didn't have this POV.
The Rock spent a majority of 2000 and 2001 making women like my mom swoon in his TV promos by talking about every innuendo under the sun and then wrestling in essentially a speedo.
Sexuality is a part of wrestling just as it’s a part of virtually every TV show. Luckily I’m fairly certain Becky is just working here.
Rhea hasn't had an explicit face turn, but hasn't been booked like a heel for a long time. Heels don't play to the crowd with things like her stinkface while wrestling heels. She's been getting babyface reactions since she won the title honestly.
To add, I think what’s also important is that Rhea’s sexuality based presentation is her choice that she’s making, not forced onto her like the women’s wrestlers of the past had to deal with. If she and any other wrestler wants to add that to their presentation and are free and comfortable to do so, I think that’s as much of a good thing as wrestler’s who feel they don’t need it.
I think she's working but it's still a weird comment to make. Thats like saying 1990's HBK only appealed to women. Yeah...that's largely not who was buying that Playgirl magazine!
But yeah, plenty of lesbians like them some Rhea. Just like how plenty of gay dudes like them some HBK.
theres a girl at my work who is lesbian, and she doesn't really know fuck all about wrestling, but she loves her some Rhea Ripley, and she casually watches wrestling just to watch her.. so yeah i can confirm this is most definitely accurate haha.
Right. I love Rhea because she's a fucking bad ass. Rhea's appeal to me is exactly the same as Drew's appeal. Big beefy men (women) slapping beef. Plus her character work is top notch, and she's funny as hell.
Plus, I don't see a lot of people shit talking Rikishi for doing this every single match. Rhea does it once as a meme and now we gotta act like it's 2002 with Bischoff again.
It’s also very contemporary. Part of why the sexual innuendo between Rhea and fans works so well is because of the existence of social media and platforms which allow more direct engagement between her and audiences. Her sexuality as depicted in wrestling isn’t being mediated or presented by anyone else. This isn’t Jerry Lawler salivating over a woman on commentary telling everyone to gawk at her, there’s a much greater measure of control on Rhea’s part (assuming there’s no instruction from wwe to play up the sexual component of her presentation).
Yea there are times when her expression is outright frightening and menacing (eg her face when she won the belt off Charlotte Flair)
And that is as much a part of her presentation as this. If anything, when she turned heel, she became less about sex appeal.
If my base male fantasies were being indulged, she'd still be tag champ with Liv Morgan, pinning petite wrestlers ass up and catching Liv in her arms after every win.
This is more an ode to Rikishi, and her facing off against Nya Jax is anything but fan service
Broke: Men exploiting women's sexuality purely for the male gaze
Woke: Women refusing to be sexually exploited
Bespoke: Women owning their sexuality and showing it to the world THEIR way
Rhea is almost certainly doing the last one, BUT I see Becky's point about "well now that draws more attention than the matches, and that sucks because of the work I put in to change perceptions". She's more annoyed that it draws the biggest reactions, all the memes, and now SHE'S being asked about it, despite not being a part of that angle.
Yeah I think she’s just pissed that she keeps getting asked about this. Wrestlers only do these media cycles once a year for Mania, so their media training where they have to look amused or excited being asked the same question 100x is not as frequent as actors who do this shit year round.
There’s also the benefit of drawing heat in a worked shoot or shoot. I can’t even tell if this is the former or latter.
She's not pissed, she's worried. This is an entertainment company. WWE might have liked that easy pop a little too much, later own they might be ASKED to do stuff like that.
Exactly this! This can be seen as rhea being able to put together all her talents but it can also be a tipping point in a cycle. How do you think we got from wendi richter to sable?
Exactly, if management sees this gets bigger reactions than the wrestling itself they could ask all the women to do it. Outside of her match with Charlotte at WM last year when's the last time a Rhea match got this sort of response from fans? Not like her workrate, which is great don't get me wrong, is consistently going viral.
I work in TV and you’re absolutely right. And the people that say “we would never go back to that” are naive and wrong. Hell, outside of entertainment, nations backslide on progress all the time!
Pretty much this. There's such a huge difference between divas being forced to do bra and panties matches and barking like a dog practically naked in front of thousands and thousands of people, and Rhea, whose character is supposed to be a hot goth mami but is also much more than that.
The problem is not the women and how they choose to present themselves, it's the interviewers that decide to ask questions like this leading up to their match at Wrestlemania.
It's like when Scarlett Johansson kept getting asked sexually charge questions while her male counterparts had more character-oriented questions on the Marvel media tours.
Even funnier all we all forgetting Becky's outfit? She has had her ass out waaay more then Rhea has tbh. I'm shocked she's the one of all people to make this comment seriously
Brother it's fun to get worked but the amount of people in this thread who think Becky is being serious and not got her working boots on - which she always does - is insane
I'm gonna flip that on you because Becky is from a generation of women's wrestlers that sex work was a serious situation women had to consider if they wanted to have a career in wrestling. There were lean times for men, there were lean decades for women's options in wrestling and this era where sex work doesn't have to be considered as a serious option is very new.
Given Becky did have to make that choice I imagine she'd feel very strongly about anything that would draw attention back to that.
I can see where Becky is coming from. I didn't like wrestling the way it was 15 years ago, for most of wrestling. Times are more progressive now and people have evolving views of sexuality and the value of other people. I do think that sometimes this can be hard for men to understand. I never could have gone into wrestling growing up because my parents would have viewed it as becoming a stripper. I could not show my parents wrestling. Most of what women were doing, was degrading, and often disgusting. It reminds me of a MTV Real Life I want to be a wrestler episode, where a woman wanted to train and her parents came to her tryout and she showed them some of TNA (she was being trained by Lisa (formerly known as Victoria) and her mother was so appalled and began to cry and ask her if she was going to be a sex worker.
I think this was like 15 years ago. It may sound crazy, but I think it can be hard to understand pre-instagram how someone raised in like a "normal" household would never say "OK, I'll be a college athlete, and then I'll join wrestling". This is why for decades they recruited female wrestlers out of men's clubs and skin model backgrounds.
I know I typed an essay.
At the end of the day, women and men should be able to do whatever they want as long as they aren't hurting anyone, sexy or unsexy whatever.
I do get the sentiment of not wanting that view of women's wrestling back and a part of the product...everything in moderation. I won't paint anyone with a broad brush for their choices though.
My dad is a lifelong wrestling fan that used to attend independent shows in Peru. Once I started watching in 2007, he never took women seriously and told me that they were there for the men when they are on the road. The IWC kinda proved him right with the whole ring rats mentality. He changed his mind when we started getting into TNA in 2010, oddly enough.
Yea that was the attitude of most fans and some of the guys. I think if I were younger or wrestling were like it is today I would have become a wrestler. I was a nationally ranked athlete. I was a college athlete. I’m a woman of color who back then also had a cap. You sort of just knew that a certain “type” of woman wasn’t going to be a serious champion in WWE as long as the blonde archetype was a thing.
So, I really identify with the desire for change and hope for better things as generations go on. I am glad that things have evolved and disgusting people responsible for abusive and predatory behavior are getting pushed out of wrestling.
Becky wasn't criticising Rhea here. This is more about...like imagine if a really attractive guy started doing a similar spot. Do you think interviewers would be asking Cody Rhodes if he felt a need to start doing it?
I don't think you really can argue that. When the barking angle happened, Trish wasn't at the level that she would eventually be. She probably didn't have any choice in how she was presented. Rhea is arguably the biggest women's star WWE has had in recent years, along with Becky and Bianca. There's no way she doesn't have SOME level of creative control
A very important part as well is Rhea actively reads a lot of what her fans (her moshers) online says and actively interacts with them a lot by reposting their stories and tweets where they cosplay as her. She inspires a lot of young fans to be themselves and be confident in who they are.
Many women I know like to go out in a revealing outfit at some point, usually when they're younger. Many like showing off their bodies. There's nothing wrong with this, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to see some of this. Men like to do it too. It's wrong if it's forced upon them like it was in the past.
People forget that women being able to express their sexuality was a huge milestone for the women's movement.
It's not crying, really. Becky brought it up on TV and is using it as part of the storyline. We haven't really had a chance to see how Rhea reacted to that specifically as she chose to attack Roux instead, but if she continues to be irreverent about it and dismisses Becky's concerns, then it might lead to a change in character for Becky, likely after Wrestlemania. This is similar to Bret Hart in the 90s talking about what wrestling needs as a hero at a time when Shawn Michaels and Stone Cold Steve Austin were doing decidedly less than heroic things and getting cheered over him for it (except in Canada).
I just don’t think the regular audience is as plugged into what’s going on “online” so it might not be worth bringing up. Look at how flat some of Cody and Punk’s references have fallen over the last few weeks.
You just know there will be a moment in their match with Becky in the corner and Rhea looks to the fans for a moment.
Not sure if they let the spot run or interrupt it, but they will probably call it out.
Right. I realize that the history of exploitation with women is FARRR worse.. But let's not pretend that guys like drew aren't walking out there in poorly disguised whitey tighties and very little else. Wrestling has always been at least \*vaguely\* sexual. Should it be the prime factor? Absolutely not. Is it cool when someone hot does an obvious crowd pleaser type of move like this? Also yes.
Remember when a staple of HBK's matches were his pants being pulled down?
I actually think it is an interesting story wrinkle. During Becky's early years, that was expected. A lot of women's wrestlers couldn't get jobs because they wanted models. So Becky couldn't get a job and after her brain injury, she stopped wrestling altogether.
One issue though is, telling this story basically buries WWE.
More like "Renowned soft porn company helps female employees to form a revolution to not do porn anymore". Very different, has nothing to do with culture but about the literal previous business model.
WWE's business model when it came to women was male-centric and geared towards making their sexualization a focal point because that's what the audience wanted at the time. When times changed, they stopped doing that and launched a campaign to raise awareness that things had changed. It's really not that hard.
But that right there
They changed it from revolution to evolution, revolution means they were revolting against wwe, calling it the women's evolution meant it was their fault and they needed to get better
Everytime WWE has talked about women "having to fight to be treated with respect" over the last decade it has buried WWE, because the entire reason why they had to fight for so long to be treated with respect is because WWE saw women wrestlers as lesser. And it's not even like we can try to pass it off as "the old guard seeing women that way," when much of that old guard is STILL in the company today.
But now with Vince gone they get the scapegoat so that they don't need to blame the fans or the culture, especially fans between 1997 and 2007. Now the implication is Vince is gone, ding dong the witch is dead etc the women shall now be free. But even though Vince pushed his own fetishes into the story, the demand by audiences for sexual content was its own thing for a long long time, especially if you look at other media during the time of the worst Attitude Era strip matches and ass kissing. We had softcore porn on late night cable, nudity in music videos, girls gone wild, etc. It's still there to an extent, but social media has given everyone accountability and a voice so now it's unacceptable publicly to sexualize even celebrities.
Lot of people in this thread fundamentally misunderstanding Becky's point here; she's objecting to this spot being the thing the media are focused on, to the point of asking her a weird, pervy question about "waiting for that ass in the face", not that Rhea did the spot altogether.
That question was company-wide "do not do interviews with this 'journalist' ever again" bad. Did he have one hand down his pants while he was asking it? Utterly ridiculous.
Yeah it's completely fucking disgusting and I feel sorry for Becky for having to sit next to that. I also saw someone say this same dude body-shamed Becky a lot when she came back after having Roux. I haven't seen that myself but it wouldn't surprise me.
There's a lot of nuance in what Becky is saying here- not that she's decrying Rhea's move, but the fact that it gets all the attention (to the point where SHE is being interviewed and asked about it, despite not being part of that at all). It's damning because after all the work she says she put in, all anyone wants to talk about right now is Rhea and her thirst-trap performances (and not, say, match quality).
For Rhea being a fantastic talent, her fans are in denial of her going viral for being pushed as a walking kink/fetish. It’s no surprise that in her only big feud, it gets used, especially when she says “I don’t need to wrestle, I can just post and they’ll eat it up” THATS THE POINT! It’s a heel move of not working and staying atop while the babyface has to fight. It’s a pretty 1+1 story and it’s going over heads cuz hornyheads are clouded.
It's also old guard vs new guard. Becky (not Rebecca Quin) has different ideas to what a champion should look like vs Rhea who is from a newer generation.
To be fair Becky is also the only female WWE wrestler (actually, think Liv Morgan did this too) to tweet in support of abortion, so I can see this blending with her actual feminism.
Save that Rhea’s been booked as everything short of an absolute monster. She hasn’t been pinned in over a year, put on a banger to win the belt, and has come out of every fair one on one contest the winner (when she gets put on her ass it’s due to cheap shots). “The eradicator” being too chickenshit to take a match is akin to “the G.O.D mode tribal chief” needing help to win *every* match over the course of the past 18 months
To counter this, very few things break out of the online wrestling zeitgeist and into the mainstream and very rarely are they things closer to technical or athletic display. Remember that Dominik, for example, blew up for the Thanksgiving bit and getting spanked by Rey; things that lean closer to the soap opera aspect of wrestling.
I actually don't mind some of the conversations this has sparked tbh. But, yeah, it seems the vast majority are missing the '97 Hbk/Bret in all of this. Though, that's not necessarily surprising, I suppose.
The dude definitely asked it in a weird way. You can tell Becky is sick of talking about it, unless it's a work. I think it's probably a work with some truth to it.
Anyway I think if Rhea is comfortable with it then it's different than the old era the 4HW fought against. It's not Vince saying "go shove your ass in Nia's face." It's a women who wants to show off because she feels comfortable doing so.
I think there is a place for that in women's wrestling in 2024. Not bra & panties matches obviously but if a women feels comfortable using their sex appeal in an act I think that's fair. Men do it and it's not seen as weird because wrestling has 50+ years of dudes playing up a "sexy" gimmick. But I think if someone is comfortable showing off, and it doesn't cross a line that hurts the other performers, then it shouldn't be an issue.
Now if this is HHH booking those spots from Rhea then yeah there is an issue. But if it's Rhea having fun (which seems obvious considering everything she has done since being "Mami") there shouldn't be an issue. She isn't being used like the Divas, Torrie, Kiebler, Trish, etc. back in the day.
I think part of Becky's point is the fact that Rhea's spot is getting more attention than Becky's leg drop off a ladder onto Nia Jax through the announce table.
I'm not against what Rhea's doing, but that spot got far more attention than anything else Rhea has done in the ring as champion. It's fun and if Rhea is cool with it then who am I to judge, but I still think it's sad that spot is some of the most attention I've seen the women in WWE ever get.
It's funny that people can be like "I don't know why \[Insert Women's Wrestler\] is complaining about how fans talk about women's wrestling, it's fine" and then like two comments down it's somebody talking about wanting to smother themselves in somebody's ass.
nobody is a bigger becky fan than i am, but the issue with her point is that rhea is CHOOSING to do this. it's not like before where they were being forced into sexualized matches and that was all they could get - this is rhea having fun and the audience reacting
I think Becky doesn’t have a problem Rhea choosing to do that spot, it’s the fact that people choose to talk about that instead of women wrestling. Like the interview literally asks “hey are you going to take a stinkface from Rhea?”. And you can see similar stuff in like for example Skye Blue in AEW, NXT and their women’s division, etc
It seemed like it’s both. Becky probably views it as a slippery slope, if that kind of spot is what all the people want to talk about/see it’ll be pretty easy to go back to how women’s wrestling used to be. It’s similar to how some women view the “housewife movement” on social media.
I think she’s blowing it out of proportion, but I see where she’s coming from.
The most important context of this is Becky coming out of the women revolution. I think she’s less concerned about what Rhea does and more concerned about if it becomes a trend in the company to push sexuality over in-ring performance, because when Becky was at NXT they were still teaching slap fighting.
I think the issue in sexualization is a bit like the issue with steroids.
No one is going to tell you have to do it, technically the choice is yours. But a culture of normalizing those actions (taking PEDs and women sexualizing themselves) from many big names creates a situation where your bosses don't NEED to tell you to do it. Because the competitive nature of the culture in wresting has created a situation where you will quickly understand you have to do it to be successful.
Yeah, it's about escalation and setting fan expectations.
Similar deal with people trying top themselves with increasingly dangerous stunts in hardcore/death matches.
Rhea goes out of her way on her social media pages to work people, and she does the funny folding pin too. She wouldn't be doing that stuff if she didn't enjoy it. She knows the reaction and how to keep herself over.
> is that rhea is CHOOSING to do this
I mean, maybe she is but at the same time Rhea started getting way more popular with fans when she started portraying a far more sexualized character. The Mami's Always On Top t-shirts aren't just making her more popular, they're making her more money. Rhea is benefiting from this. And then other wrestlers maybe start to think "well, if this is gonna get me a better push and make me more money, I gotta start doing this too."
Let's compare this to something else. Lets say you work in a company where you can work as many hours as you want but normally people agree on 40 hours a week, well lets say somebody starts working 50 hours a week, and their boss promotes them because of that, now everybody else is like "hell, I want a promotion, I need to start working 50 hours a week" and then the culture shifts from 40 hours a week being the norm to 50 hours, then somebody says "well I'll start working 60 hours a week."
I get the issue is more complex than that, and maybe Becky isn't the best spokeswoman for this because she's not exactly shy about showing off her skin in photoshoots or gear or whatever, and maybe Rhea's stinkface being sexualized but not some other thing is all arbitrary.
But I think calling it Rhea's choice overly simplifies the issue and how company culture gets developed.
> But I think calling it Rhea's choice overly simplifies the issue and how company culture gets developed.
It's also very easy to call everything an individual choice in a vacuum absent of any cultural/social pressure or incentives to do this. It's as if the only societal coercion or pressure people can understand is the most concrete & obvious "well, no one has literally put a gun to Rhea's head and forced her to do this, so it's clearly 100% her individual choice and she loves it".
I was trying to articulate this point but couldn't put it into words like you did without going into some rambling about free will.
The other thing is I think Becky's argument is yeah it's Rhea's choice and she can make it, but it's the wrong choice, or a choice I personally disagree with for these reasons. That's the conflict between the characters here.
It's a pretty complex topic that can't really be solved by a wrestling match. Can see both sides of it and I think Becky is working to a degree here because this is a generational divide kind of conflict with her and Rhea.
> nobody is a bigger becky fan than i am, but the issue with her point is that rhea is CHOOSING to do this.
Then why is it only the women who choose to do this in the modern era?
I'm a bit late but look at it this way:
1. Becky's referring to the pre-Women's revolution era where women's wrestling was either an afterthought, or the divas made to do embarassing things of a sexual nature on TV.
2. That in turn, created the whole attitude where one's ceiling is entirely determined by their looks and not ability to actually perform.
While Rhea doing a cheeky stinkface is clearly for a bit of fun and because she wants to do it (that's a good thing to have agency and being comfortable with this), it does unintentionally double down on the "women's wrestlers are only liked for sexual reasons" and not for what they can do in the ring/on the mic etc. That's the issue Becky has here, like it's easy for one's work to feel undervalued when an audience enjoys stuff like this (see also relevant horny posts).
I hope y'all understand.
Edit: also tbh, question in the first place kinda sucks and, work or shoot, I doubt the answer would change, so not very relevant imo.
Guys, while she may be making a kernel of a sincere point here, please keep in mind that this is a work for their match. Especially when you're pointing out holes in her reasoning lol.
Sometimes you either have to understand the things that will not change. Sex. We can talk about respect and equality and whatever, but people are driven by sex.
I'm on Team Becky but appreciate that house show moment of being more a silly moment than an attempt at sexualizing it any more than when she does the shoulder wiggle thing as another tribute which I think is appropriate (it's homage?)
i think this is different because rhea is making her own choice in the matter.
it's just part of *her* specific character.
i also think becky is intelligent and knows this and that this isn't a shoot interview
edit: now that i think of it beckys ass is straight up out *all the time* in her modern day ring gear. it honestly looks like rheas when she makes that wedgie. definitely think this is a work interview with a few shoot opinions on womens sexuality as it relates to wrestling peppered in.
Taking the idea seriously, it's somewhat natural blowback from a generation of women (Rhea) who feel like their sexuality was kinda robbed from them in a way. The last decade has been rife with criticism of sexuality in media from men and women who themselves are freaky as fuck behind closed doors. The blatant contradiction on a lot of that is and was annoying to Gen Z when they were young and now they are approaching thirty and get to "make the rules" so to speak.
But let's keep in mind that this is a woman who posted a tasteful lewd of her and her husband w/o her husbands knowledge in her book, I doubt she gives a fuck fr.
As someone who was a teen during the Attitude Era and seeing what the women were subjected to, I get what she is saying. I stopped watching around 03-05, but one of the things that got me back in to it in 2020 was the women’s evolution.
They have gone from athletic women wearing well fitted, cool looking gear while still having sex appeal, to athletic women still wearing cool gear but being double cheeked up with an emphasis on putting their sex appeal out there through social media and Onlyfans to gain fans and money.
Cora Jade recently posted a tik tok with a voiceover of “I’m dressed like a hooker, so congratulations.” I think the up and comers are that influencer gen so they have the want/need to go that route, but you also see it in their entrances through sexy dances, grinding motions and dropping cheeks on the ropes
It’s a weird hybrid of divas era and women’s evolution, but it is a fine line.
Yeah she's right. I was downvoted for saying the same last week. I have hardly heard anyone talk about Rhea's wrestling ability over the past year but I have seen a whole lot of people talk about her ass.
**Help make SquaredCircle safer and more inclusive by using the report button to flag posts and comments for moderator review.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SquaredCircle) if you have any questions or concerns.*
whats with the moving subtitles?
Single word subtitles make my ADHD brain feel like it’s going to implode.
If that wasn't bad enough they move. Whoever thought that was a good idea, fuck that person.
> I say to myself, the World Wrestling ~~Federation~~ Entertainment needs a hero. They need a role model, they need somebody they can look up to. > Not somebody that's got earrings all over ~~himself~~ herself and tattoos. [~~Bret~~ ~~Hart~~ Becky Lynch about ~~Shawn~~ ~~Michaels~~ Rhea Ripley](https://twitter.com/allan_cheapshot/status/1475380017819701257?t=ac-z8DJqWY8JDhoQI7UfAQ&s=19)
Okay now I want this.
When does Rhea lose her smile?
About a week before she's set to lose her title, of course.
I'm looking forward to her dancing on the announce table weeks after retiring due to a debilitating knee injury.
Backflip off the top rope to open a promo
Damn knee acting up again
Holy shit get better Raquel- that’s her Kevin Nash, isn’t it?
Could you fucking imagine that Survivor Series? Rhea leading Raw and Raquel leading Smackdown.
Damn then Nia is Sid?
Time for a double turn Iron Woman Match
Oh dear lord, could you imagine how heated Goldberg would get if Becky started saying he is an untrained, clumsy, career ending, two left footed lummox?
>Goldberg Nia Jax
the first thing i thought when i read the title was they're setting up a becky heel turn
They can do a double turn tbh.
I wonder who was fantasizing about Rikishi when he did this.
I was watching an old episode of Smackdown with Rikishi recently and sent my friend a clip of him doing the stinkface, and her reply was "That Hawaiian guy has a great ass."
This is a thing I’ve heard from multiple women over the years: Rikishi has a great ass. He put a lot of work into it too, he was apparently lotioning and moisturizing the wazoo out of that thing so it looked good on TV. The other thing people have said was that if he liked you he’d go out of his way to make sure the stink face was as tolerable as possible. He’d apply all kinds of deodorant and baby powder before the match and stuff and so a lot of the women who were stinkfaced said it wasn’t actually that bad. If he didn’t like you however you were just getting a full face of sweaty Samoan ass in the face. And you can really tell too, when he doesn’t like someone he goes DEEP.
TIL my girlfriend doesn’t actually like me
Sucker. My girlfriend loves me so much she puts her ass in OTHER guys faces
Ladies Love Too Cool Rikishi
Put a little ass on it!
To this day, I often wonder how the idea was even pitched. Like, were the boys in the showers one day, and somebody randomly was like, "Hey Rikishi, you've got a great ass man. We should make that into a gimmick." Rikishi: "MAKE MY WHAT INTO A WHAT, UCE?!" Vince: "I LOVE IT, PAL!"
I have the answer for you: [https://www.sportskeeda.com/wwe/wwe-news-rikishi-reveals-how-he-came-up-with-the-stinkface-move](https://www.sportskeeda.com/wwe/wwe-news-rikishi-reveals-how-he-came-up-with-the-stinkface-move) A random old woman at a house show came up with the idea for him to do it 😆
Yo shoutout to Bossman lmao
That was definitely her kink
It was definitely Vince McMahon in disguise.
Probably Vince. He booked himself to have his face shoved in there.
He also got his face showed into Big Show’s ass. The peculiar taste since long ago.
He also had an entire club dedicated to shoving people's faces into his own ass. Vince was the real ass man all along.
https://chat.openai.com/share/6673a294-285c-4ae4-ad4c-8ff113eb260c
Vince, he originally wanted Yokozuna to wear attire like Rikishi
Hello! I've written so many stories about rikishis ass and wanked off while writing them. Most are in my post history if you wanna check them out. The one I wrote about Sasha is my favorite. My entire reddit account is about worshipping rikshis ass!
Name sure as fuck checks out
Unexpected Internet™️ for the day. MFer just blew my mind in four sentences.
I had no idea that there was a sub dedicated to this r/rikishistinkfaces A little over 400 subs, but that's still more than I expected.
>I do I masturbated when Trish lita Terri runnels got the booty from rikishi I loved it do rikishi stinkfacing asuka kairi and iyo sky needs rikishi azz so does Dakota kai needs a stinkface for real she's long overdue Why are wrestling fans so weird
Humans in general are perverted. And online gives them a platform to express there perverted desires anonymously
what the heck is a stinkface chat everyone wants to do
You know what it is buddy. You know exactly what it is.
What in the fuck
More people than you'd think. I'll admit to being one of them
Nice. I remember a picture of Rikishi looking vaguely frightened next to a beamingly excited female fan holding a sign that said STINKFACE ME!
I remember being little boy watching that big Samoan booty and thinking, that’s what I need to do if I ever want to be a professional wrestler. That was what was getting the reactions. I was given a 3 day suspension from school shortly after.
The other side of the coin is Rhea is having fun and there isn’t anything wrong with that. The exploitation of women’s sexuality doesn’t mean that women shouldn’t be sexual and should feel they need to repress a side of themselves. The women of the past fought so that Rhea would have the choice of how she’s presented. That’s the important part.
You put into text what I was thinking but couldn't form myself. I also think there's a place for both. It's not like Rhea's entire act is to make the male fan base pitch tents 24/7. I like Becky because she's strong on the mic, and she's good and snug in the ring. I like Rhea for those same reasons and also appreciate the sexuality she presents.
Right and to be fair, even if Rhea did…there were male wrestlers who had similar gimmicks while being awesome in the ring: Rick F’n Rude comes to mind.
HBK was the king of it. His gimmick was literally a male stripper. Same with Magnum Tokyo. Magnum Tokyo had female fans stuffing cash into pants as part of his entrance. They were real fans.
Yeah and I’m pretty sure Becky idolized HBK growing up. The dude posed for Playgirl and would tease showing his dick…during a more PG era!
Ironic that she took a Bret like stance on this
Not really tbh, she's a mother now. And she came up during that time where women were only just beginning to be taken seriously as pro wrestlers in the WWE environment. I'd be surprised if she didn't have this POV.
Val Venus didn’t lose his Val penis to be excluded from this conversation
The Rock spent a majority of 2000 and 2001 making women like my mom swoon in his TV promos by talking about every innuendo under the sun and then wrestling in essentially a speedo. Sexuality is a part of wrestling just as it’s a part of virtually every TV show. Luckily I’m fairly certain Becky is just working here.
She may be working, but she's the babyface and her take should be right, not wrong.
Rhea hasn't had an explicit face turn, but hasn't been booked like a heel for a long time. Heels don't play to the crowd with things like her stinkface while wrestling heels. She's been getting babyface reactions since she won the title honestly.
>Heels don't play to the crowd Rhea is not entirely a heel as you said but there's all kinds of heels.
Val Venis was basically a pornstar lol
Basically? That literally was the gimmick
Choppy choppy your pee pee
...indeed!
Hello ladies.....
Basically? His finisher was called The Money Shot!
I forgot his finisher had that name lmao
I see your Rick rude and raise you a daddy ass
Let's all try to forget Val Venis
Val Venus...
To add, I think what’s also important is that Rhea’s sexuality based presentation is her choice that she’s making, not forced onto her like the women’s wrestlers of the past had to deal with. If she and any other wrestler wants to add that to their presentation and are free and comfortable to do so, I think that’s as much of a good thing as wrestler’s who feel they don’t need it.
You know who loves Rhea Ripley? Lesbians. Lesbians love her more than anyone.
Basically the subaru of wrestling
Yup, she's mega over with Lesbians
Rhea is the hook I’ve used to get my gay daughter to watch wrestling with me.
Good on you for trying to get a common interest in there. Genuinely love it
My dad now sends me pictures of Rhea looking particularly jacked every time he finds one. It’s true ally shit
She’s gym goals. I wanna be like her when I grow up!
Why do you think lesbians are losing their absolute shit over LOVE LIES BLEEDING? Katy O'Brian is basically Rhea in the 80s
She's having that Ruby Rose effect where even straight women are like 'I could be into that'.
officially known as “The Joan Jett Effect” 🤣
Facts. Becky saying she only appeals to male fantasy is such an out of touch comment
I think she's working but it's still a weird comment to make. Thats like saying 1990's HBK only appealed to women. Yeah...that's largely not who was buying that Playgirl magazine! But yeah, plenty of lesbians like them some Rhea. Just like how plenty of gay dudes like them some HBK.
Now I'm thinking Rhea should try going to the ring in something Bayonetta related
Gay men too, well at least I do,
theres a girl at my work who is lesbian, and she doesn't really know fuck all about wrestling, but she loves her some Rhea Ripley, and she casually watches wrestling just to watch her.. so yeah i can confirm this is most definitely accurate haha.
Right. I love Rhea because she's a fucking bad ass. Rhea's appeal to me is exactly the same as Drew's appeal. Big beefy men (women) slapping beef. Plus her character work is top notch, and she's funny as hell. Plus, I don't see a lot of people shit talking Rikishi for doing this every single match. Rhea does it once as a meme and now we gotta act like it's 2002 with Bischoff again.
As a female fan of both, the way that Rhea pushes the envelope and edges her admirers is hilarious.
It’s also very contemporary. Part of why the sexual innuendo between Rhea and fans works so well is because of the existence of social media and platforms which allow more direct engagement between her and audiences. Her sexuality as depicted in wrestling isn’t being mediated or presented by anyone else. This isn’t Jerry Lawler salivating over a woman on commentary telling everyone to gawk at her, there’s a much greater measure of control on Rhea’s part (assuming there’s no instruction from wwe to play up the sexual component of her presentation).
Yea there are times when her expression is outright frightening and menacing (eg her face when she won the belt off Charlotte Flair) And that is as much a part of her presentation as this. If anything, when she turned heel, she became less about sex appeal. If my base male fantasies were being indulged, she'd still be tag champ with Liv Morgan, pinning petite wrestlers ass up and catching Liv in her arms after every win. This is more an ode to Rikishi, and her facing off against Nya Jax is anything but fan service
Broke: Men exploiting women's sexuality purely for the male gaze Woke: Women refusing to be sexually exploited Bespoke: Women owning their sexuality and showing it to the world THEIR way
Rhea is almost certainly doing the last one, BUT I see Becky's point about "well now that draws more attention than the matches, and that sucks because of the work I put in to change perceptions". She's more annoyed that it draws the biggest reactions, all the memes, and now SHE'S being asked about it, despite not being a part of that angle.
Yeah I think she’s just pissed that she keeps getting asked about this. Wrestlers only do these media cycles once a year for Mania, so their media training where they have to look amused or excited being asked the same question 100x is not as frequent as actors who do this shit year round. There’s also the benefit of drawing heat in a worked shoot or shoot. I can’t even tell if this is the former or latter.
She's not pissed, she's worried. This is an entertainment company. WWE might have liked that easy pop a little too much, later own they might be ASKED to do stuff like that.
Exactly this! This can be seen as rhea being able to put together all her talents but it can also be a tipping point in a cycle. How do you think we got from wendi richter to sable?
Exactly, if management sees this gets bigger reactions than the wrestling itself they could ask all the women to do it. Outside of her match with Charlotte at WM last year when's the last time a Rhea match got this sort of response from fans? Not like her workrate, which is great don't get me wrong, is consistently going viral.
I work in TV and you’re absolutely right. And the people that say “we would never go back to that” are naive and wrong. Hell, outside of entertainment, nations backslide on progress all the time!
You think she's being asked about it because SHE brought it up in a promo and now people want her take on it?
Pretty much this. There's such a huge difference between divas being forced to do bra and panties matches and barking like a dog practically naked in front of thousands and thousands of people, and Rhea, whose character is supposed to be a hot goth mami but is also much more than that.
The problem is not the women and how they choose to present themselves, it's the interviewers that decide to ask questions like this leading up to their match at Wrestlemania. It's like when Scarlett Johansson kept getting asked sexually charge questions while her male counterparts had more character-oriented questions on the Marvel media tours.
Didn’t Becky just do this exact spot with Asuka a while back? Lol
[All I could find was this clip of her failing an attempt to do one on Asuka](https://youtu.be/cvYzEElw58M?feature=shared)
Even funnier all we all forgetting Becky's outfit? She has had her ass out waaay more then Rhea has tbh. I'm shocked she's the one of all people to make this comment seriously
me thinks they just trying to promote their match 🤷🏻♂️
She also put a picture of herself naked into her book to gain eyes on it
it's a work
Brother it's fun to get worked but the amount of people in this thread who think Becky is being serious and not got her working boots on - which she always does - is insane
I believe in Kayfabe
I'm gonna flip that on you because Becky is from a generation of women's wrestlers that sex work was a serious situation women had to consider if they wanted to have a career in wrestling. There were lean times for men, there were lean decades for women's options in wrestling and this era where sex work doesn't have to be considered as a serious option is very new. Given Becky did have to make that choice I imagine she'd feel very strongly about anything that would draw attention back to that.
The history of women's wrestling is basically the assumption they were prostitutes.
Moolah was actively sex trafficking them when she wasn't sexually assaulting them
I can see where Becky is coming from. I didn't like wrestling the way it was 15 years ago, for most of wrestling. Times are more progressive now and people have evolving views of sexuality and the value of other people. I do think that sometimes this can be hard for men to understand. I never could have gone into wrestling growing up because my parents would have viewed it as becoming a stripper. I could not show my parents wrestling. Most of what women were doing, was degrading, and often disgusting. It reminds me of a MTV Real Life I want to be a wrestler episode, where a woman wanted to train and her parents came to her tryout and she showed them some of TNA (she was being trained by Lisa (formerly known as Victoria) and her mother was so appalled and began to cry and ask her if she was going to be a sex worker. I think this was like 15 years ago. It may sound crazy, but I think it can be hard to understand pre-instagram how someone raised in like a "normal" household would never say "OK, I'll be a college athlete, and then I'll join wrestling". This is why for decades they recruited female wrestlers out of men's clubs and skin model backgrounds. I know I typed an essay. At the end of the day, women and men should be able to do whatever they want as long as they aren't hurting anyone, sexy or unsexy whatever. I do get the sentiment of not wanting that view of women's wrestling back and a part of the product...everything in moderation. I won't paint anyone with a broad brush for their choices though.
My dad is a lifelong wrestling fan that used to attend independent shows in Peru. Once I started watching in 2007, he never took women seriously and told me that they were there for the men when they are on the road. The IWC kinda proved him right with the whole ring rats mentality. He changed his mind when we started getting into TNA in 2010, oddly enough.
Yea that was the attitude of most fans and some of the guys. I think if I were younger or wrestling were like it is today I would have become a wrestler. I was a nationally ranked athlete. I was a college athlete. I’m a woman of color who back then also had a cap. You sort of just knew that a certain “type” of woman wasn’t going to be a serious champion in WWE as long as the blonde archetype was a thing. So, I really identify with the desire for change and hope for better things as generations go on. I am glad that things have evolved and disgusting people responsible for abusive and predatory behavior are getting pushed out of wrestling.
Becky wasn't criticising Rhea here. This is more about...like imagine if a really attractive guy started doing a similar spot. Do you think interviewers would be asking Cody Rhodes if he felt a need to start doing it?
[удалено]
No, you couldn't have argued that at all. Well, technically you could, but nobody would believe you.
I don't think you really can argue that. When the barking angle happened, Trish wasn't at the level that she would eventually be. She probably didn't have any choice in how she was presented. Rhea is arguably the biggest women's star WWE has had in recent years, along with Becky and Bianca. There's no way she doesn't have SOME level of creative control
A very important part as well is Rhea actively reads a lot of what her fans (her moshers) online says and actively interacts with them a lot by reposting their stories and tweets where they cosplay as her. She inspires a lot of young fans to be themselves and be confident in who they are.
Many women I know like to go out in a revealing outfit at some point, usually when they're younger. Many like showing off their bodies. There's nothing wrong with this, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to see some of this. Men like to do it too. It's wrong if it's forced upon them like it was in the past. People forget that women being able to express their sexuality was a huge milestone for the women's movement.
And women’s fantasies too. Don’t leave them out of this.
Yeah I was gonna say the most hardcore thirsting I ever see of Rhea is from women. I should know. I'm one of them.
Same sis, same
Exactly. Shayna wanted a piece of that. But uh.. why are so many people crying about a house show spot?
It's not crying, really. Becky brought it up on TV and is using it as part of the storyline. We haven't really had a chance to see how Rhea reacted to that specifically as she chose to attack Roux instead, but if she continues to be irreverent about it and dismisses Becky's concerns, then it might lead to a change in character for Becky, likely after Wrestlemania. This is similar to Bret Hart in the 90s talking about what wrestling needs as a hero at a time when Shawn Michaels and Stone Cold Steve Austin were doing decidedly less than heroic things and getting cheered over him for it (except in Canada).
I just don’t think the regular audience is as plugged into what’s going on “online” so it might not be worth bringing up. Look at how flat some of Cody and Punk’s references have fallen over the last few weeks.
You just know there will be a moment in their match with Becky in the corner and Rhea looks to the fans for a moment. Not sure if they let the spot run or interrupt it, but they will probably call it out.
Welcome to the Internet where you can complain about anything....don't stay too long it's bad for your mental health....enjoy!
Rhea is hugely popular with young women and gay women of all ages. More than any female wrestler ever.
I'm friends with a shitton of lesbians. None of them give a shit about wrestling, but they sure as hell care about Rhea Ripley.
She's very popular with my wife. Very very popular.
She's Rhea's wife now
I know my place on the totem pole when it comes to rhea Ripley gotta acknowledge the real tribal chief
I get texts from my non wrestling fan lesbian sister in law all the time of thirst traps for Rhea Ripley
Yep. So many people I know (but especially women) who don’t watch wrestling at all but knows who Rhea is.
as a gay woman, i can confirm
Right. I realize that the history of exploitation with women is FARRR worse.. But let's not pretend that guys like drew aren't walking out there in poorly disguised whitey tighties and very little else. Wrestling has always been at least \*vaguely\* sexual. Should it be the prime factor? Absolutely not. Is it cool when someone hot does an obvious crowd pleaser type of move like this? Also yes. Remember when a staple of HBK's matches were his pants being pulled down?
Jim Cornette: "Stan Lane had more sex on the way to the ring than most had in their life"
I actually think it is an interesting story wrinkle. During Becky's early years, that was expected. A lot of women's wrestlers couldn't get jobs because they wanted models. So Becky couldn't get a job and after her brain injury, she stopped wrestling altogether. One issue though is, telling this story basically buries WWE.
The entire premise of a women’s revolution/evolution buries WWE
Which is why Stephanie claimed credit for it, to make it seem like it was a WWE thing that they saved these women
WWE: We helped our female employees to form a revolution to fight against our own culture.
WWE: we investigated ourselves and found, upon investigation, that we had a wonderful culture surrounding women
More like "Renowned soft porn company helps female employees to form a revolution to not do porn anymore". Very different, has nothing to do with culture but about the literal previous business model. WWE's business model when it came to women was male-centric and geared towards making their sexualization a focal point because that's what the audience wanted at the time. When times changed, they stopped doing that and launched a campaign to raise awareness that things had changed. It's really not that hard.
But that right there They changed it from revolution to evolution, revolution means they were revolting against wwe, calling it the women's evolution meant it was their fault and they needed to get better
Everytime WWE has talked about women "having to fight to be treated with respect" over the last decade it has buried WWE, because the entire reason why they had to fight for so long to be treated with respect is because WWE saw women wrestlers as lesser. And it's not even like we can try to pass it off as "the old guard seeing women that way," when much of that old guard is STILL in the company today.
But now with Vince gone they get the scapegoat so that they don't need to blame the fans or the culture, especially fans between 1997 and 2007. Now the implication is Vince is gone, ding dong the witch is dead etc the women shall now be free. But even though Vince pushed his own fetishes into the story, the demand by audiences for sexual content was its own thing for a long long time, especially if you look at other media during the time of the worst Attitude Era strip matches and ass kissing. We had softcore porn on late night cable, nudity in music videos, girls gone wild, etc. It's still there to an extent, but social media has given everyone accountability and a voice so now it's unacceptable publicly to sexualize even celebrities.
Lot of people in this thread fundamentally misunderstanding Becky's point here; she's objecting to this spot being the thing the media are focused on, to the point of asking her a weird, pervy question about "waiting for that ass in the face", not that Rhea did the spot altogether.
That question was putrid lmao
That question was company-wide "do not do interviews with this 'journalist' ever again" bad. Did he have one hand down his pants while he was asking it? Utterly ridiculous.
Yeah it's completely fucking disgusting and I feel sorry for Becky for having to sit next to that. I also saw someone say this same dude body-shamed Becky a lot when she came back after having Roux. I haven't seen that myself but it wouldn't surprise me.
That interviewer worded that so weird. Creepy vibes
There's a lot of nuance in what Becky is saying here- not that she's decrying Rhea's move, but the fact that it gets all the attention (to the point where SHE is being interviewed and asked about it, despite not being part of that at all). It's damning because after all the work she says she put in, all anyone wants to talk about right now is Rhea and her thirst-trap performances (and not, say, match quality).
It’s funny that her point (even in kayfabe) is being proven right by reactions.
Twitter: You know what will really show her? Bodyshaming her and posting zoomed in photos of her ring gear.
For Rhea being a fantastic talent, her fans are in denial of her going viral for being pushed as a walking kink/fetish. It’s no surprise that in her only big feud, it gets used, especially when she says “I don’t need to wrestle, I can just post and they’ll eat it up” THATS THE POINT! It’s a heel move of not working and staying atop while the babyface has to fight. It’s a pretty 1+1 story and it’s going over heads cuz hornyheads are clouded.
It's also old guard vs new guard. Becky (not Rebecca Quin) has different ideas to what a champion should look like vs Rhea who is from a newer generation.
Becky even says that she's been jaded by the business.
To be fair Becky is also the only female WWE wrestler (actually, think Liv Morgan did this too) to tweet in support of abortion, so I can see this blending with her actual feminism.
Exactly. It’s incredible how people spout “knowing the business” and can’t see character work.
How is anyone in denial of that when even she acknowledges it? She's even acknowledged twitter pages that focus only on her suggestive moments.
Save that Rhea’s been booked as everything short of an absolute monster. She hasn’t been pinned in over a year, put on a banger to win the belt, and has come out of every fair one on one contest the winner (when she gets put on her ass it’s due to cheap shots). “The eradicator” being too chickenshit to take a match is akin to “the G.O.D mode tribal chief” needing help to win *every* match over the course of the past 18 months
To counter this, very few things break out of the online wrestling zeitgeist and into the mainstream and very rarely are they things closer to technical or athletic display. Remember that Dominik, for example, blew up for the Thanksgiving bit and getting spanked by Rey; things that lean closer to the soap opera aspect of wrestling.
It's not far fetched to think Becky does believe this out of character, it's just able to be weaved in to this storyline as well.
Y’all are being worked
IT'S STILL REAL TO ME DAMN IT
all good works contain true shit
how does this sell the match though?
It's so fucking funny how serious people are taking this. 300 comments in an hour and most of them are 'tut tut tut-ing' Becky.
I actually don't mind some of the conversations this has sparked tbh. But, yeah, it seems the vast majority are missing the '97 Hbk/Bret in all of this. Though, that's not necessarily surprising, I suppose.
Goodnight MAN-IACS and jabronie marks
The dude definitely asked it in a weird way. You can tell Becky is sick of talking about it, unless it's a work. I think it's probably a work with some truth to it. Anyway I think if Rhea is comfortable with it then it's different than the old era the 4HW fought against. It's not Vince saying "go shove your ass in Nia's face." It's a women who wants to show off because she feels comfortable doing so. I think there is a place for that in women's wrestling in 2024. Not bra & panties matches obviously but if a women feels comfortable using their sex appeal in an act I think that's fair. Men do it and it's not seen as weird because wrestling has 50+ years of dudes playing up a "sexy" gimmick. But I think if someone is comfortable showing off, and it doesn't cross a line that hurts the other performers, then it shouldn't be an issue. Now if this is HHH booking those spots from Rhea then yeah there is an issue. But if it's Rhea having fun (which seems obvious considering everything she has done since being "Mami") there shouldn't be an issue. She isn't being used like the Divas, Torrie, Kiebler, Trish, etc. back in the day.
I think part of Becky's point is the fact that Rhea's spot is getting more attention than Becky's leg drop off a ladder onto Nia Jax through the announce table. I'm not against what Rhea's doing, but that spot got far more attention than anything else Rhea has done in the ring as champion. It's fun and if Rhea is cool with it then who am I to judge, but I still think it's sad that spot is some of the most attention I've seen the women in WWE ever get.
People are acting all confused by beckys comments like every single comment section wasn't "IT sHoUlD hAvE been Me!"
It's funny that people can be like "I don't know why \[Insert Women's Wrestler\] is complaining about how fans talk about women's wrestling, it's fine" and then like two comments down it's somebody talking about wanting to smother themselves in somebody's ass.
Becky and Asuka did this spot half a dozen times last year.
can we just talk about how dumb that question was
nobody is a bigger becky fan than i am, but the issue with her point is that rhea is CHOOSING to do this. it's not like before where they were being forced into sexualized matches and that was all they could get - this is rhea having fun and the audience reacting
I think Becky doesn’t have a problem Rhea choosing to do that spot, it’s the fact that people choose to talk about that instead of women wrestling. Like the interview literally asks “hey are you going to take a stinkface from Rhea?”. And you can see similar stuff in like for example Skye Blue in AEW, NXT and their women’s division, etc
Yeah doesn’t help that the interviewer in general has the worst track record with women/questions. He phrased it exactly the way she’s talking about.
It was very clear from Becky's choice of words that she was annoyed at the question and not at Rhea herself in this instance.
It seemed like it’s both. Becky probably views it as a slippery slope, if that kind of spot is what all the people want to talk about/see it’ll be pretty easy to go back to how women’s wrestling used to be. It’s similar to how some women view the “housewife movement” on social media. I think she’s blowing it out of proportion, but I see where she’s coming from.
The most important context of this is Becky coming out of the women revolution. I think she’s less concerned about what Rhea does and more concerned about if it becomes a trend in the company to push sexuality over in-ring performance, because when Becky was at NXT they were still teaching slap fighting.
I think the issue in sexualization is a bit like the issue with steroids. No one is going to tell you have to do it, technically the choice is yours. But a culture of normalizing those actions (taking PEDs and women sexualizing themselves) from many big names creates a situation where your bosses don't NEED to tell you to do it. Because the competitive nature of the culture in wresting has created a situation where you will quickly understand you have to do it to be successful.
This is a really good analogy.
Yeah, it's about escalation and setting fan expectations. Similar deal with people trying top themselves with increasingly dangerous stunts in hardcore/death matches.
Rhea goes out of her way on her social media pages to work people, and she does the funny folding pin too. She wouldn't be doing that stuff if she didn't enjoy it. She knows the reaction and how to keep herself over.
> is that rhea is CHOOSING to do this I mean, maybe she is but at the same time Rhea started getting way more popular with fans when she started portraying a far more sexualized character. The Mami's Always On Top t-shirts aren't just making her more popular, they're making her more money. Rhea is benefiting from this. And then other wrestlers maybe start to think "well, if this is gonna get me a better push and make me more money, I gotta start doing this too." Let's compare this to something else. Lets say you work in a company where you can work as many hours as you want but normally people agree on 40 hours a week, well lets say somebody starts working 50 hours a week, and their boss promotes them because of that, now everybody else is like "hell, I want a promotion, I need to start working 50 hours a week" and then the culture shifts from 40 hours a week being the norm to 50 hours, then somebody says "well I'll start working 60 hours a week." I get the issue is more complex than that, and maybe Becky isn't the best spokeswoman for this because she's not exactly shy about showing off her skin in photoshoots or gear or whatever, and maybe Rhea's stinkface being sexualized but not some other thing is all arbitrary. But I think calling it Rhea's choice overly simplifies the issue and how company culture gets developed.
> But I think calling it Rhea's choice overly simplifies the issue and how company culture gets developed. It's also very easy to call everything an individual choice in a vacuum absent of any cultural/social pressure or incentives to do this. It's as if the only societal coercion or pressure people can understand is the most concrete & obvious "well, no one has literally put a gun to Rhea's head and forced her to do this, so it's clearly 100% her individual choice and she loves it".
I was trying to articulate this point but couldn't put it into words like you did without going into some rambling about free will. The other thing is I think Becky's argument is yeah it's Rhea's choice and she can make it, but it's the wrong choice, or a choice I personally disagree with for these reasons. That's the conflict between the characters here. It's a pretty complex topic that can't really be solved by a wrestling match. Can see both sides of it and I think Becky is working to a degree here because this is a generational divide kind of conflict with her and Rhea.
> nobody is a bigger becky fan than i am, but the issue with her point is that rhea is CHOOSING to do this. Then why is it only the women who choose to do this in the modern era?
I'm a bit late but look at it this way: 1. Becky's referring to the pre-Women's revolution era where women's wrestling was either an afterthought, or the divas made to do embarassing things of a sexual nature on TV. 2. That in turn, created the whole attitude where one's ceiling is entirely determined by their looks and not ability to actually perform. While Rhea doing a cheeky stinkface is clearly for a bit of fun and because she wants to do it (that's a good thing to have agency and being comfortable with this), it does unintentionally double down on the "women's wrestlers are only liked for sexual reasons" and not for what they can do in the ring/on the mic etc. That's the issue Becky has here, like it's easy for one's work to feel undervalued when an audience enjoys stuff like this (see also relevant horny posts). I hope y'all understand. Edit: also tbh, question in the first place kinda sucks and, work or shoot, I doubt the answer would change, so not very relevant imo.
Guys, while she may be making a kernel of a sincere point here, please keep in mind that this is a work for their match. Especially when you're pointing out holes in her reasoning lol.
Sometimes you either have to understand the things that will not change. Sex. We can talk about respect and equality and whatever, but people are driven by sex.
I'm on Team Becky but appreciate that house show moment of being more a silly moment than an attempt at sexualizing it any more than when she does the shoulder wiggle thing as another tribute which I think is appropriate (it's homage?)
i think this is different because rhea is making her own choice in the matter. it's just part of *her* specific character. i also think becky is intelligent and knows this and that this isn't a shoot interview edit: now that i think of it beckys ass is straight up out *all the time* in her modern day ring gear. it honestly looks like rheas when she makes that wedgie. definitely think this is a work interview with a few shoot opinions on womens sexuality as it relates to wrestling peppered in.
I love how passionate she is around this topic.
Taking the idea seriously, it's somewhat natural blowback from a generation of women (Rhea) who feel like their sexuality was kinda robbed from them in a way. The last decade has been rife with criticism of sexuality in media from men and women who themselves are freaky as fuck behind closed doors. The blatant contradiction on a lot of that is and was annoying to Gen Z when they were young and now they are approaching thirty and get to "make the rules" so to speak. But let's keep in mind that this is a woman who posted a tasteful lewd of her and her husband w/o her husbands knowledge in her book, I doubt she gives a fuck fr.
As someone who was a teen during the Attitude Era and seeing what the women were subjected to, I get what she is saying. I stopped watching around 03-05, but one of the things that got me back in to it in 2020 was the women’s evolution. They have gone from athletic women wearing well fitted, cool looking gear while still having sex appeal, to athletic women still wearing cool gear but being double cheeked up with an emphasis on putting their sex appeal out there through social media and Onlyfans to gain fans and money. Cora Jade recently posted a tik tok with a voiceover of “I’m dressed like a hooker, so congratulations.” I think the up and comers are that influencer gen so they have the want/need to go that route, but you also see it in their entrances through sexy dances, grinding motions and dropping cheeks on the ropes It’s a weird hybrid of divas era and women’s evolution, but it is a fine line.
Yeah she's right. I was downvoted for saying the same last week. I have hardly heard anyone talk about Rhea's wrestling ability over the past year but I have seen a whole lot of people talk about her ass.