WWE’s TV-PG product was uncharacteristically liberal with the sleaze this past week as both Raw and SmackDown Live featured segments with half-naked blondes du jour.
Prior to Alexa Bliss’ ill-fated Moment of Bliss segment on Raw, a stagehand randomly walked in on Bliss while the former Raw women’s champion was changing. Bliss was made to cover up with her top in what was an awkward segment for both intentional and unintentional reasons.
The faux pas has since resulted in an explosion of YouTube views as it amassed almost two million views within its first few hours online. As of this writing, Bliss’ backstage segment has garnered over 3.7 million views on YouTube. Median viewership for Raw last week was 792,626. In fact, Bliss drew even more attention than Braun Strowman’s latest limousine stunt, an always-popular staple of the Strowman character, which currently stands at an impressive 3.3 million views.
Not to be outdone (although she still has some catching up to do in the viewership department), Mandy Rose was featured in a conceptually flawed storyline that culminated in the blonde temptress luring Jimmy Uso to her hotel room. As part of her attempted entrapment of Jimmy Uso, Rose wore a lingerie ensemble before her plan backfired and degenerated into a brawl with archival Naomi. As of this writing, Rose’s hotel room fiasco has garnered 1.1 million views, the most of any video from Tuesday’s broadcast. The next-closest video, The Miz vs. Sheamus in SmackDown Live’s main event, has just over 631,000 views.
It’s no secret that sex sells in WWE. Older males define WWE’s demographic, and scantily clad women—whether it be via wardrobe malfunction or leisure—is a can’t-miss among wrestling fans. In fact, one of the all-time highest viewership totals in WWE YouTube history was the 37 million views dedicated to Eva Marie’s own wardrobe malfunction on the August 9 edition of SmackDown Live. As a result, Marie’s scheduled match against Becky Lynch was promptly cancelled as a referee was forced to cover Marie in a towel. Eva Marie has since left WWE and will be part of the forthcoming cast of Celebrity Big Brother.
These segments don’t figure to be par for the course in WWE, especially through the success of the company’s women’s initiative, which most recently introduced the Women’s Tag Team Championships and is on pace to culminate in the first all-women’s WrestleMania main event. At the same time, the more main event real estate women continue to command in WWE, the less WWE will be criticized for using women as sex symbols to promote its product since these vignettes hardly define today’s climate of women’s wrestling in WWE.
