I am a wrestling fan. Not in the ironic, arm’s-length way people sometimes admit it, but genuinely, historically, emotionally. I grew up watching both WWF (now WWE) and WCW in the 1990s, switching back and forth depending on which match was better, which storyline felt hotter, which moment demanded attention. Wrestling, at its best, was camp and spectacle, athleticism and melodrama, a shared language of absurdity that still somehow felt meaningful.
Then I fell off.
I fell off in the early 2000s, when women’s wrestling was rebranded as the “Divas” division and female performers were treated less like athletes and more like props. Bikini contests, bra and panties matches, and endless commentary about women’s bodies replaced serious storytelling. Wrestling didn’t just marginalize women during that era; it reduced them to visual filler, designed primarily to entertain horny teenage boys rather than anyone invested in women as full characters.
For years, I assumed that was simply what wrestling was now.
That changed around 2015, when my now-husband introduced me to Lucha Underground. That show reminded me that wrestling is not a monolith. Women were allowed to be dangerous, complex, morally ambiguous, and central to the story. They weren’t there to soften the product or decorate it; they were there to disrupt it. Lucha Underground cracked open the possibility that wrestling could still evolve.
Around the same time, WWE launched what it branded the “Women’s Revolution.” For the first time in years, women headlined pay-per-views. They were given longer matches, clearer motivations, and real stakes. The branding was often self-congratulatory, but the shift mattered. It felt like forward motion.
Looking back from January 2026, it is clear that some of that progress stuck. Women now routinely headline WrestleMania weekends. Performers like Rhea Ripley are positioned as dominant narrative centers rather than side attractions, built around power, intimidation, and presence rather than sex appeal. Openly queer wrestlers like Sonya Deville have existed on WWE television for years without their sexuality being treated as a reveal or a joke. Queerness, at least at times, is allowed to simply be part of the landscape.
And yet.
Which is why one particular episode of Monday Night RAW in late 2019 still stands out as a cautionary tale.
On the December 30, 2019 episode of RAW, WWE aired the culmination of a months-long storyline involving Lana, Rusev, and Bobby Lashley. The angle revolved around infidelity, humiliation, and spectacle, eventually leading to a kayfabe wedding that closed the show. Wrestling weddings are a genre unto themselves, and this one followed the formula perfectly: dramatic objections, absurd outfits, surprise exes, and a suspiciously large cake in the ring.
It was cringe in the way wrestling often is. Fans love that feeling even as they groan at it.
Then Liv Morgan appeared.
At the time, Liv Morgan had been absent from WWE television since July 2019, with months of cryptic social media posts hinting at a character reset. Her return should have been a reinvention, a moment of clarity about who she was becoming. Instead, she was introduced as a plot device.
Morgan interrupted the wedding, declaring that the love of her life was standing in the ring when she first came to WWE. The storyline deliberately encouraged the audience to assume she meant Bobby Lashley. Lashley even responded on-screen, denying that he had ever touched her.
Morgan corrected him.
“No, no, no. Not you. I’m talking about Lana.”
The camera whipped to Lana’s stunned face. The crowd reacted. Shock achieved.
And that was the problem.
Even viewed through the lens of 2026, this moment remains unsettling not because it featured a same-sex declaration of love, but because of how it was framed. Queerness was treated as a twist, not an identity. A reveal designed to provoke gasps rather than invite understanding. Liv Morgan’s feelings were not allowed to exist as interior truth. They existed only to disrupt someone else’s story.
That is the first failure.
When LGBTQ storylines exist primarily for shock value, they do not expand representation. They exploit it. Wrestling has a long history of treating queerness as a joke, a threat, or a spectacle, and this angle did nothing to disrupt that pattern. Liv Morgan’s declaration was not framed with sincerity or complexity; it was a swerve.
The second failure came immediately after.
The storyline collapsed Liv Morgan’s declaration of love into the expectation of conflict between women. Desire became jealousy. Emotion became spectacle. The possibility of a queer narrative grounded in longing, confusion, or vulnerability dissolved into the familiar trope of women positioned against each other for audience consumption.
This mattered then, and it still matters now.
Because the existence of better representation in 2026 does not erase the lessons of 2019. In fact, it sharpens them. WWE has shown that it can tell stories where women are dominant without being degraded. It has shown that queer performers can exist without being framed as shocking or scandalous. That means moments like the Liv Morgan angle were not inevitable products of their time. They were choices.
Progress that can be rolled back for a cheap reaction was never as solid as it claimed to be.
The 2019 storyline exposed how conditional WWE’s feminism and inclusivity still were. Women could be champions, but not always authors of their own stories. Queer identity could exist, but only when it served someone else’s narrative or generated buzz.
Wrestling is absurd by design. It thrives on exaggeration, melodrama, and heightened emotion. But there is a difference between camp and cruelty, between storytelling and mockery. When queerness is treated as a punchline rather than a truth, the message is clear: this is not for you. This is about you.
Looking back from 2026, that RAW episode remains a reminder that representation is not just about visibility. It is about respect. And revolutions that stop short of that were never finished to begin with.
