The history of wrestling started way back at 708 BC, but intergender wrestling only started around the 90s where you have full-grown women, highly muscled, competing with men wrestlers in mixed wrestling matches.
The ‘Aha’ Moment in 1977 by Cathy Davis and NYAC
At a point in 1977, a particular event happened in New York, and it involved Cathy Davis, who sued the New York State Athletic Commission (NYAC), and she did this because she was denied the boxing license because of her gender as being a woman, and the case was decided where the judge of the case then invalidated the New York State Athletic Commission rule, which is a rule number under 205.15, and this particular rule states that no woman may be licensed as a boxer or second or licensed to compete in any wrestling match.
The opinion of the judge, the precedent which the judge used to settle this, was Jackie Garrett v. New York State Athletic Commission (1975). Even though the New York State Athletic Commission tried to appeal for this rule, which was later dropped and the appeal was invalid eventually, which means Cathy Davis won the ruling, and she (Cathy Davis) was the first woman known publicly to be given the right to box or to wrestle as a woman.
Women’s Wrestling’s First Inter-Gender Bouts
Thus, it is safe to say that women’s wrestling started precisely in 1977. But the very first and official mixed wrestling or intergender wrestling match or male vs female match happened around between late-1970s/early-1980s, and it was carried out or orchestrated by the comedian Andy Kaufman. Kaufman had participated in several female matches of different natures of this type, that’s intergender wrestling, and he proclaimed himself to be the first world intergender wrestling champion.
And he didn’t just say this openly, but he said this in public, and also issued an open challenge to any female challenger who might want to contend with him to acquire the championship from him.
And this marked the beginning of a crossover of a very serious feud or beef between Koffman and the wrestling legend Jerry The King Lawler. It wasn’t until 1996 that the increase in popularity of intergender wrestling became much more pronounced after the MSG Curtain Call incident, where a group of wrestlers including Shawn Michaels, Triple H, Kevin Nash, and Scott Hall went off script and hugged at the end of a match. Based on the originality of intergender wrestling, fans tend to be much more fond of it and love its originality, and therefore, it was accepted by the wrestling fans at that point. In fact, at a point, intergender wrestling began to have more popularity in major North American promotions such as Extreme Championship Wrestling, World Wrestling Federation, and World Championship Wrestling.
Mildred Burke, A Pioneer of Early 1900s Mixed Gender Wrestling
Mildred Burke, who would later become the women’s pro wrestling champion, was also one, out of a few then, who supported and participated in intergender wrestling. Burke was the pioneer of mixed wrestling, which started as far back as the late 1930s.
Burke, just about 5 feet 2 inches tall, weighing over 130 pounds, started a career initially with a wrestling promoter called Billy Wolfie in a circus and carnival side show, which was part of America’s top entertainment events in the late 90s.
Usually, in these carnival matches, the audience is allowed to freely challenge wrestlers within the ring, and at this point, it was when Burke was wrestling under the circles of Billy Wolfie. And around this time was usually when this went on, audience members, both male and female, challenged her. According to reports, Burke wrestled and defeated more than 200 male wrestlers, while recording just 3 defeats all through this interval.
Chyna as the Reigning Icon of Inter-gender Wrestling
The most successful female wrestler to ever compete in intergender wrestling matches was Chyna, and she was an ex-bodybuilder, previously a bodybuilder, who regularly booked to wrestle and make counterparts in the WWF Attitude Era. Chyna was the three-time Intercontinental Champion, a championship which is traditionally held by or contested for by just men, and she was briefly the number one contender for the company’s WWF World Championship.
But aside from her, we also have some brief history which different women during the WWF arena did or possessed something deeply in relation to intergender wrestling. For instance, four women held the company’s now-discontinued Hardcore Championship, and these four included Terri, Mighty Molly, Trish Stratus, and one of The Godfather’s Hos. The now-discontinued Cruiserweight Championship has also been held by three women, and this involved Jacqueline (while under the WWE logo), Daffney, and Madusa (the latter while the title was under WCW’s banner).
Aside from these events, there have been other mixed wrestling matches that have taken place in WWE, the worldwide entertainment, and also even outside of WWE, such as in places like the Asian continent, such as precisely in Japan. To start with, in West Mania in 2022, The Boogeyman competed with Booker T and Sharmell in an intergender handicap match. Also, there is the six-person hardcore tag team match that took place on WWE in 2006 One Night Stand, and in this event, you have a team like Edge (male), Lita (female), and Mick Foley (male) defeated the team of Beulah McGillicutty (female), Terry Funk (male), and Tommy Dreamer (male), after male wrestler Edge (male) speared and pinned female wrestler Beulah (female).
And then aside from that, you also have people like Harvey Whippleman, who has the distinction of being the only male WWE wrestler in the history of WWE to hold the now-discontinued Women’s Championship after he defeated The Kat (female) in a snow bunny match, while disguised in drag as Hervina.
When the Ladies Took the Main Stage of Wrestling
Though aside from this, we’ve had female wrestlers also participate in key main event of male wrestlers. And this, we can take a special example in Royal Rumble: to date, only four women have competed in the men’s wrestling Royal Rumble in WWE, and the first person is Chyna (1999 and 2000, the only one to do so multiple times), Beth Phoenix (2010), Kharma (2012), and Nia Jax (2019, the first since the introduction of women’s Royal Rumble).
Also, the biggest main event of WWE, which is WrestleMania, we’ve had a male compete in female matches. And this is Fastlove, for example, over Anthony Carelli (better known by his ring name Santino Marella), who won the diva’s battle royal while dressed in drag as Santina Marella (Santino’s twin sister).
Japan’s Wild Wrestling Encounters to International Spotlight
Down to Japan, precisely during Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling-Explosion (FMW-E) promotion’s March 27, 2000 pay-per-view, Superstar H (male) (known as unmasked Hayabusa) wrestled Kyoko Inoue (female).
Earlier that month, Inoue (female) pinned H (male). H (male) defeated Inoue (female) in a decisive battle, despite her persistent strikes and credible threats.
Besides that, we saw in 2011 in Japan, where Kenny Omega wrestled a 9-year-old girl named Haruka, and the video of the wrestling match was posted publicly, and unsurprisingly, it went viral based on the age level of both wrestlers, and it even went fast making international news, which led to Omega receiving numerous or several death threats.
But one thing that can be noted in the wrestling match between Omega and this little girl was the fact that Omega wrestled in such a way whereby he didn’t harm the girl, and rather even allowed the girl to have a free hand in a new way to make more offenses on him than him making it on her.
WWE’s Take on Intergender Wrestling or Mixed Wrestling Matches
We can see that mixed wrestling matches aren’t really an ongoing thing in WWE, but rather sporadic. The reason for this is that WWE treats or permits intergender wrestling matches only on a part-time basis because it is PG rating.
And what is the PG rating in wrestling? Basically means a film or a show, match or an event that is broadcast with parental guidance, and to ensure that kids don’t watch them because it can be harmful, it can be harmful to them. It is believed that one of the instances that WWE does not want to portray to young audiences and fans is to see men overpowering women on live TV.
The Mexican Twist on Mixed or Intergender Wrestling
Mexican wrestling promotions tend to have more intergender matches in tag team matches than WWE. For example, in Mexican lucha libre, intergender matches are usually orchestrated as tag team matches.
Both males and females are only allowed to attack those of their own gender. In some cases, these tag teams are siblings (like Cinthia Moreno and Oriental), trained together by the same instructor, or even in real-life relationships like boyfriend and girlfriend (Cibernético and Estrellita) or husband and wife (Billy Boy and Faby Apache).
During Lucha Underground, men and women compete regularly in one-on-one matches. Sexy Star won the Lucha Underground title in an elimination match and lost it to Johnny Mundo in an intergender match.
Intergender Wrestling has also been carried out in Park Wrestling, and precisely this happened in the main event.
Back in 2019 at the Slammiversary XVII event featured a very high-profile women’s Intergender Wrestling match where Sami Callihan defeated Tessa Blanchard.
At Hard to Kill, Tessa Blanchard defeated Sami Callihan again in a rematch to win the Impact World Championship.
Intergender Wrestling in Independent Promotions
Intergender wrestling has also happened in different independent wrestling promotions. And in 2018, precisely April 15th, at Smash Wrestling, a small independent professional wrestling promotion staged an event called It is All Fun and Games, and at this event, the card for the event included a mixed wrestling match where a woman and a man faced each other.
But for this match, it was very special because we had two women, Allie and Xandra Bale, who competed against each other, and also against the male opponent, Joey Ryan.
Intergender Wrestling Events for Little Women and Beyond
Just like how you have same-gender wrestling promotions such as WWE, TNA, IMPACT (TNA), AEW, you also have wrestling promotions that focus exclusively on intergender wrestling matches, and the very example I’m going to show you is Little Women, an inter-promotional event that is an event in which wrestlers compete against an opponent from different companies and there is no pre-existing storyline at all.
Take, for example, the Deonna Purrazzo (female) vs Matthew Fredrick Riddle (male) match; the Purrazzo (female) vs Riddle (male) match was a very, very short match and it lasted 5 minutes, bell to bell.
The two wrestlers began tentatively, but Purrazzo (female) eventually or quickly increased their intensity and began to fight off Riddle (male), and initially, Riddle (male) was caught off guard, but he recovered along as the match went on from Purrazzo’s (female) onslaught, and he tries to pin her (female) after running a heel strike on her (female), but we should note here that Riddle (male) is an amateur wrestler but he has won different world or few world titles in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and he has also had a successful UFC career before he was terminated due to his marijuana usage.
