Graves Responds to Twitter Backlash
Early today, NXT announcer Corey Graves commented on the #GiveDivasAChance hashtag that trended worldwide during Monday Night Raw last night.
While I dig #GiveDivasAChance, I truly believe that our divas will make their own chances in time. Have you watched @WWENXT lately?!
— Corey Graves (@WWEGraves) February 24, 2015
Since then it seems Graves has caught quite a bit of grief over his opinions.
Remember that time I tried to speak rationally to the Internet? Yeah, that’ll never happen again. #sicksadworld
— Corey Graves (@WWEGraves) February 24, 2015
He continued:
“I’d be willing to bet that most of the people blowing up my Twitter right now also believe everyone should get a trophy for playing. You make a point. I make a point. Repeat until issue is resolved. They call it conversation. Try it. It’s less exhausting.”
“What you all have done, is take a guy (me) trying to DEFEND your cause, and turned me off by being idiots. I hope you all fail.”
My Take
KILLAM: I get the point Corey is trying to make here, and it’s that the women with enough talent will rise to the top, and pave their own career with or without the company’s help. And yes, the current crop of NXT Divas are fantastic; nobody is disagreeing with him there.
But you have to be out-of-your-mind naive to believe that talents – and especially the women, who were given less than one minute (that’s 0.56% of the total show without overrun) to work this week – can grow and “make their own chances” without the support of the company.
Certain NXT Divas are stealing shows and making women’s wrestling look good – that’s true. But they’re also GIVEN 15 minutes to work the ring on pseudo-PPV. Somebody made that call for them, as is the case with every match that gets put on a card. Wrestling isn’t a real sport; they’re not waiting for Nikki Bella to get her batting average up. You can’t “make your own chance” in 30-second matches.
This is more akin to the real-world Hollywood problem of directors/writers green-lighting terrible films with terrible roles for women, in which they’re given two minutes to talk in a 90-minute project, and only used for their sex appeal. The real female stars of Hollywood made their mark by being selective with their roles and having the dignity to reject sexist parts; that’s not something any WWE Diva has the opportunity to do. You do what the producer tells you to do, because if you don’t, they’ll give your part to somebody who will. That’s not going to change until A) the roster groups together to demand change, or B) a drastic change in mindset happens within upper management.
I hear what Graves is saying, but my advice to him is to stop caring about what negative morons on Twitter have to say, and focus your attention more on the actual issue you claim to support. The “mute” button is there for a reason.
UPDATE: To his credit…
@MikeKillam I respect and appreciate you putting thoughts behind your statements. THANK YOU for that. I never claimed to be “right.”
— Corey Graves (@WWEGraves) February 25, 2015
