TBS Champion Kris Statlander responds to critics of AEW‘s women’s division.
At a Starrcast media scrum (courtesy of Knockouts and 3 Counts), Kris Statlander was asked to describe how she would respond to criticism of the women’s division.
“I’d say I’d like to see them get in the ring and try to do anything that we’ve done. Of course, not everyone’s gonna like everything. Maybe not everyone works well together, but not everyone has chemistry with everyone. I think it’s unfair, a lot of what we see online is just based off of small clips, not the whole match.
“You don’t know what does into putting a match together, you don’t know what goes into having a match. You don’t know what goes into being a wrestler, all the stress that we have to deal with, all the criticism that we get online from people that don’t know us. We don’t know them.”
Kris Statlander: We Try To Prove That We Deserve As Much Praise As The Guys
Kris Statlander continued by describing how many of the women’s wrestlers aim to prove that they deserve as much praise as the guys. She noted that the women face more criticism, and they try to persevere.
“We get a lot of people that tell us to kill ourselves and that they hate us. They think we should get fired from that we love doing because we had a bit of an off night,” Kris Statlander said. “I wish people would take into consideration that yes, we are on television. W, we are wrestlers, we are superstars, if you will. But we’re people.
“If any of you guys read a tweet online that said, ‘This person’s so bad at holding a phone, they should kill themselves, they should get fired for this.’ How would you guys feel? It sucks, and we have to always constantly go out there and put on a brave face. Because we’re women, we’re always seen as less than. There’s always going to be so much more criticism because we’ll never be good enough. So many of us try so hard to prove that we do deserve just as much praise as the guys do.
“Because we really do. We show up, we work out butts off. We train, we try hard. We want to put on the best show that we can for all of our fans. For everyone, for the company. It just really sucks that people that have never done anything that we have to do week after week, all the traveling that we have to do. It sucks that they can’t just like wrestling for wrestling, and that they think that they know better than we do.”
Kris Statlander: I Wish People Would Understand That We’re Doing Our Best
Statlander went on to state that everyone is doing their best, and no one will have their best night every night. She admitted that it’s hard to compete on TV with the constant feeling that critics will eat them alive if they aren’t perfect.
“If we have an off night, we know it,” Kris Statlander said. “We don’t need the entire internet to tell us that we didn’t have our best night. I just really wish that people would take into consideration that we’re doing our best. Not everyone is top of the top. Not everyone has their best night every night. It is what it is. We understand it.
“We all know that we’re gonna get chewed up, spit out, eaten alive, we all know that it’s coming. It sucks that we have that fear going onto TV, feeling like, ‘If we screw up this one thing or ‘man, I’m not feeling great, I’m a little nervous.’ We know that people are gonna hate us for it, for just trying to do our jobs. It’s quite unfortunate that we have to deal with that more than a lot of other people do.”
Kris Statlander will defend her title against Ruby Soho at AEW All Out.
WrestleZone will have coverage of AEW All Out as it airs on September 3.
The video is available here:
If you use these quotes, please credit the original source and link back to WrestleZone with an h/t for the transcription.
