Posted in: Sports, TV, WWE | Tagged: crown jewel, queen's crown, wrestling, wwe
WWE's 6-Minute "Build to Queen's Crown" Triples Length of QC Matches
WWE has released a new video discussing the "Build To" the Queen's Crown tournament finals happening at WWE Crown Jewel tomorrow, and the video is already three times as long as any individual Queen's Crown match. Kicking off two weeks ago, the all-women Queen's Crown tournament has run simultaneously with the all-men King of the Ring Tournament, but while each match in the King of the Ring tournament so far has run for about 10 minutes, every single match in the Queen's Crown tournament has run for about 2 minutes.
The disparity between the amount of time allotted to women's matches compared to the time allotted to men's matches in equivalent and concurrent tournaments harkens back to the Divas era of WWE, where the company focused on hiring models over wrestlers and where women's matches were rarely given more than a few minutes. Additionally, storylines of the era frequently focused on the appearance or sexual relationships of the wrestlers and the matches consisted of very few actual wrestling moves, sometimes taking place inside tubs of jello or with the purpose of removing your opponent's clothing.
The disrespect with which WWE treated its female performers for over a decade led to the company launching the Women's Evolution (TM), a self-aggrandizing public relations campaign that celebrated WWE's commitment to correcting the biased and discriminatory way in which women were treated… by WWE. Despite the irony of WWE patting itself on the back for finally solving a problem that WWE themselves created and perpetuated long past the point where anyone thought it was acceptable, the Women's Evolution (TM)produced many of WWE's top stars today, such as Becky Lynch, Sasha Banks, and Charlotte Flair. However, the Queen's Crown tournament is just the latest in a long list of signs that WWE could be reverting back to the Divas era treatment of women. Call it a Women's Diva-lution, if you will, though it seems doubtful WWE will embark on any public relations campaigns to promote that.
Along with the return to two-minute matches with storylines about who is "the most beautiful woman in WWE" comes the return of John Laurenitis, an architect of the hiring practices of the Divas era, to the role of head of talent relations in WWE, though ultimately it is Vince McMahon who makes the final call on all decisions in the company. Since WWE corrected its own poor treatment of women with the Women's Evolution, women's wrestling has been one of the few highlights of an otherwise creatively lifeless WWE Raw and Smackdown, and the company's female talent roster deserves fat better treatment than they've received during the Build to Queen's Crown.
Tomorrow at Crown Jewel in Saudi Arabia, Zelina Vega and Doudrop will compete to be crowned the winner of the Queen's Crown tournament. Will their match be allotted more than 2 minutes? Watch the Build to Queen's Crown video below.