WWE legend Candice Michelle believes that women’s wrestling has drifted too far from femininity, and she wants to see that change.
The former WWE Women’s Champion made the comments in an interview with TMZ’s Inside the Ring, arguing that equal pay and equal time don’t have to mean women wrestle the same way men do.
“I think what we’re missing is a little bit more of the femininity,” Michelle said. “We’ve pushed so hard, ‘Oh, women are equal to men.’ Like, we get equal time, equal pay. There’s a part of that. But at the end of the day, I want the men to be a little bit more masculine. I want them to be so masculine that I get to drop into my femininity a little bit.”
Michelle was clear that her point isn’t about sexiness, even as she acknowledged wrestling has never shied away from it. Her argument is about movement and storytelling, specifically that women have a distinct way of carrying themselves in the ring that gets lost when the goal is simply to match what the men are doing.
“We don’t have to do it the way a man does,” she said. “We need both energies to make it beautiful.”
She also pointed to an intergender tag match on TNA as an example of the dynamic she wants to see more of, praising how the men and women in that match each brought their own energy rather than mirroring each other.
“The men were so manly and the women were so great,” Michelle said. “I just loved it so much.”
Michelle has made appearances for TNA in recent years and has spoken openly about her passion for the women’s division. She previously called the Charlotte Flair and Tiffany Stratton real-life tension “brilliant” for WWE storytelling, and has said she is waiting for the call for a second WWE Evolution event.