Wrestling promoter walks into a bar… what a joke

I didn’t choose wrestling because I’m the kind of person who can be ignored and wrestling didn’t choose me to stand by and let it happen.

Women are hugely outnumbered by men in the wrestling business both in the locker room and in the media. We are in the minority. 

This means that sometimes every day feels like a fight. A fight for us to be seen and a fight for our voices to be heard. It shouldn’t be this way but it is. 

Recently I had an experience that showed me, once again, how often we’re dismissed, ignored, and, in this case, literally shut out of conversations.  

I was sitting in a bar with a wrestling podcaster after a WWE show when we were approached by a British wrestling promoter. He’d taken issue with the podcaster’s tweets about his company’s decision to bring back a wrestler who was named during the Speaking Out movement and also the lack of information given regarding the investigation they had conducted into the matter. 

While the promoter argued his case for, not only the wrestler being brought back but the company’s transparency over the matter, he did it with his back turned to me. 

When I tried to interject he ignored me, only acknowledging me once, when I brought up how bad his football comparison was, then just dismissing me.

When he winded down he went to shake my hand and I told him no, that he had spent his entire time ignoring me, with his back turned to me, a woman, while discussing this issue. Only now he wanted to acknowledge I was even there. 

My opinion on this didn’t appear to matter to him at all. He seemed to have no time for a woman who wanted to speak about the issue of girls, young women, and women of all ages, being taken advantage of in the wrestling business. 

Something I actually know a lot about. 

I then asked him to leave but he once again turned his back on me to continue making his argument. It was more important to him to get the last word in on a man who criticised him rather than spend one minute listening to a woman with a voice and experience in the wrestling business. 

I was treated with complete disregard and disrespect that night, in a way that I know wouldn’t have happened to one of my male peers.

My opinion as a woman and as a woman who’s been in this business for years wasn’t valid at all. I also wasn’t respected enough as a journalist not to have this whole spectacle play out in front of me. 

And, most importantly, the situation wasn’t respected by him enough for him not to argue about it in public, in a bar. This was no place to be discussing a serious matter.

My treatment would have been disgusting and reprehensible in any situation but here the issue that was being debated made it all the more infuriating. 

Money can get you a wrestling promotion, a wrestling belt you can wear to the bar, and plenty of hangers-on. But it can’t buy you class.

So often men want to speak over women when talking about issues that directly affect us. Some men believe their power, money, and privilege, mean they should always be the decision-makers and the loudest voices in the room. 

We shouldn’t have to still be fighting so hard to be heard. 

This is just a very recent example of an incident that happened to me. It’s not the first time something like this has happened to me and I’m sure it won’t be the last. 

I also know so many women are experiencing the same thing every single day in the wrestling business and in other industries. 

What I experienced didn’t give me the impression that things are better in locker rooms across the world when issues are brought up where the final decision will be made by a man but it’s women who are affected. 

Speaking Out is not wrestling’s past. When it happened I saw many men want to jump to be the ones who were seen as supportive and helpful but as the years have gone on many have stood down. I know there were so many who wanted to be my friend, help me professionally and be seen as a champion of women’s voices but once they ticked that box they then thought they could close the chapter on it. 

I wanted to tell this story because I know it will resonate with so many women who just want to be heard. I wanted to tell this story so men will read it and maybe think about how women are still being treated despite all the progress we’ve apparently made. 

And I wanted to tell this story for myself because I’m angry. I’ve been around here long enough to know all the signs of when you’re just not being respected 

It’s been nearly 30 years since the first time I ever tried to start a conversation about wrestling as a child on the playground, only to be told to go away cause, ‘girls can’t know anything.’ 

Now I’m a grown woman, with decades of experience as a fan, with every qualification needed to be a journalist, with a job in the industry, a platform, and still, so many times, I’m made to feel like the little girl who shouldn’t be here when I try to speak. 

Sometimes it’s by trolls online just wanting a fight, sometimes it’s by male journalists who want to mark out rather than think, sometimes it’s actual wrestlers who figure the girl interviewer was just assigned this by her editor, and sometimes it’s a wrestling promoter who wants to turn their back on you rather than have to look you in the eye when they say things they know you’ll disagree with. 

I’ve found myself in situations no male journalist would be put in and having to think about things that would never cross their minds. That shouldn’t be happening.

But I didn’t choose wrestling because I’m the kind of person who can be ignored and wrestling didn’t choose me to stand by and let it happen. 

And I’m not scared of any man in this business, least of all Progress Wrestling owner Lee McAteer.