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WWE PLEs lately haven’t featured many black male wrestlers in the line-ups, which unlike in past decades, have been limited to just five matches per event in most cases. Paul “Triple H” Levesque, WWE’s Chief Content Officer, was asked about this in his post-Bad Blood media Q&A last Saturday night.
“I see everybody gets the opportunity,” he said. “I don’t see the difference in anybody. I don’t see the color, the nationality; I see the talent. I don’t see the difference between men and women. I see talent. We tell stories with those talent. [We ask ourselves] how they can tell those stories and handle those stories and represent those stories and bring them forward? I don’t keep track of any of that. I do what is relevant and what is best, the best in storytelling, and that’s what goes.”
While NXT features black male singles wrestlers in prominent roles, including NXT Champion Trick Williams, NXT North American Champion Oba Femi, and top challengers Wes Lee amd Je’Von Evans, the black wrestlers on WWE’s main rosters (Raw and Smackdown) are featured on the level beneath the main events that usually occupy the five slots on PLEs, such as the Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston storyline on the Intercontinental level, The Street Profits in the tag team division, Carmelo Hayes who is in the U.S. Title mix, and R-Truth who is usually in a lower-card comedy segment.
Other than infrequent appearances by The Rock, WWE doesn’t currently have black male wrestlers in main event-level singles positions, although the roster otherwise features POC in prominent spots including The Bloodline, Jey Uso, Andrade, Legado del Fantasma, and Dragon Lee, among others.
WWE’s main roster Women’s Division is more diverse including Bianca Belair & Jade Cargill, who have have pushed at the top of the tag team division. They were also featured as “hosts” of Bad Blood. Naomi has recently been positioned as being a singles title contender.
Rich Fann and I spoke at length about this topic in this week’s “Everything with Rich & Wade” VIP podcast.
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