Former WWE Superstar Gives His Thoughts On Intergender Wrestling

Intergender wrestling has become somewhat of a more accepted concept in today’s professional wrestling landscape with intergender matches seeming to take place at independent promotions across the United States. We’ve seen WWE dabble into the idea a little bit more with the return of James Ellsworth, who was known as the Intergender Champion on the independents, recently booking him against Asuka on SmackDown Live now two weeks in a row.

Former MLW, IMPACT and WWE Superstar MVP recently spoke with Chris Van Vliet and offered up his opinion on the idea of intergender matches when he was asked his thoughts on Matt Hardy’s Broken/Woken character:

“It’s funny because like I said, Matt is one of my closest friends in the business and I’ve always said that, you know, the school of thought that I came from was, you know, the suspension of disbelief, simulated combat kinda deal and I’m a fan of the creativity and the entertainment factor. I’m tremendously proud of Matt for reinventing himself and having this second wind, but I’ve never really been a big of the…what’s the word I’m looking for…It’s almost too comical.

But, it’s tremendously entertaining. Like I said, I love Matt to death and it’s entertaining, but part of the reason why I left WWE to go to Japan is I live the realistic, simulated combat and I’ll take this moment to make this point; intergender wrestling has become real popular and I’m not a fan of it because I come from a different school of thought for wrestling. There are two schools of thought it seems. If you’re a fan of intergender wrestling then you look at pro wrestling as scripted entertainment, superheroes…and if you play Mortal Kombat you know, one of those games, Chun Li could whoop your ass. But, if we’re doing suspension of disbelief, there’s not very many women, on the planet, that can beat me in combat if we’re grappling.

There’s some female grapplers you know, that will catch that joint, catch that choke and you’ll tap, but not if I can punch. Not if I can kick. That kinda changes things so if you approach pro wrestling from the way I was brought in it’s, ‘Okay, this is simulated combat. We’re trying to make the fans forget it’s predetermined’. Well, you can’t do that when you watch a big, grown ass man and woman do all kinds of really cool move [twirls fingers around]. But again, if you’re watching The Avengers, then you watch Black Widow, she’ll kick ten dudes asses and it’s awesome. So if that’s the school how you approach it, then yeah, intergender wrestling is great. But, if you come from that other school of thought like, ‘Hey, we’re fighters’, then it doesn’t work so much.”

If you use any of the above transcription, please credit The Chairshot.

EA’s Take: Perhaps I’ll get slain for this, but quite honestly, I’m more on MVP’s side of this topic. I know that will be misconstrued, so allow me to explain. I too, have difficulty with the suspension of disbelief just in general with today’s product, not specifically towards intergender wrestling. I just feel there’s way too much of it whether it be spots in a match (which I see the most of), to other details regarding the action. Intergender wrestling, I think if done correctly, can be entertaining. It can’t be billed as a fight though, not unless you want to deal with the backlash of that. What WWE has been doing recently with Ellsworth has been perfect in my eyes, using it as more comedy than anything.

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