Lita Believes Time Has Come For Gender Neutral Wrestling Championships

WWE Hall of Famer Lita believes women’s wrestling has progressed enough where we can retire gender-specific championships and have titles which represent everyone.

The Attitude Era star was joined by fellow women’s wrestling legend Trish Stratus for a panel at the Northern Ireland Comic-Con by Monopoly Events.

During the session, the duo was asked what changes they would make to the women’s division if they were booking it. Trish Stratus mentioned how the quality of wrestling among female competitors has improved significantly in the last few years but she explained that it has come at the cost of character work:

“I think I would like to have a little bit more focus on characters, right? I feel like, for sure, now there’s way more opportunities for women. Obviously, we see them main eventing all the time, and we see them in high-profile matches. But I think what we had back in the day was a lot more character stuff.

You got to know these characters, and the fans could really resonate with the character a little bit more. Now they’re just kind of having these great matches, but there’s no backstory as much as there was back in the day. So, I think character development would be one thing I’d like to focus on.”

Lita then chimed in talking about how women are getting more representation on shows now. The thing she would change, however, is increase the interaction between male and female competitors. The former champion even suggested the idea of gender-neutral titles to achieve this:

“What I would love to see is more interplay between the genders and have those lines be blurred further, where titles don’t have to be men’s or women’s titles, just titles, and whoever manages to get somebody’s shoulders down for three seconds is the champion, or whoever taps somebody out is the champion for that night.”

WWE has played with the idea of intergender wrestling on occasion but never fully committed to it. Chyna winning the Intercontinental Championship was the biggest example of it. She defended the championship against many male competitors during her run. The title went back to being exclusive to the men’s division afterward.

In more recent years we have seen Beth Pheonix wrestling Santino Marella and the brief interaction between Dean Ambrose and Nia Jax before the former left the company.

The storyline between Dominik Mysterio and Rhea Ripley is the closest we have come to seeing intergender wrestling matches under Triple H. It’s possible that this story may lead to a revision of the past somewhere down the line.