Eva Marie Is Far From The Worst Female Wrestler Ever

There's not question, Eva Marie is a controversial figure in modern WWE. She’s a conventionally attractive woman but amidst an increasingly deep and talented roster of female talents in WWE and elsewhere, she can’t exactly “hang” as an in-ring talent. Moreover, she hasn’t awed fans with her personality on the mic. So, while she consistently gets a reaction from fans, there’s a fair argument to be made that she’s not getting heel heat so much as “go away heat” from an audience that genuinely doesn’t want to see her. A less than inspired storyline with Doudrop only reinforced that perception. For all the criticism she provokes, however, Eva Marie is a far cry from the worst female wrestler ever.

Eva Marie Entered Wrestling Within A Unique Context

In evaluating Eva Marie’s WWE career, its important to put it in context. She was a pretty face WWE hired in the hopes she might come along as a wrestler, and that was largely the model for the preceding years. Acts like The Bella Twins has pioneered that path to reasonable results. In the years to follow, NXT saw the emergence of wrestlers like Paige, Emma, Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks, Becky Lynch, Bayley, and Asuka en route to the full-blown Women’s Revolution on the main roster.

Related: Eva Marie: Age, Height, Relationship Status And Other Things To Know About Her

So Eva Marie joined the roster in a moment of flux, a style of signing from the “generation” before, caught in a paradigm shift. She never did come close to matching the top in-ring performers of that period. However, she did find a niche as WWE launched its Total Divas series. Her looks and real life personality helped establish her as one of the most featured faces in WWE’s reality television universe. In turn, she was one of the primary stars to benefit as a wrestler from appearing on Total Divas. This road to success itself flies in the face of more traditional wrestling sensibilities, but did make her relevant in a relatively unique way.

WWE, WCW, And Others Booked Women Wrestlers With Little To No Training

For fans who rush to calling Eva Marie the worst female wrestler of all time, it’s important to remember the poor female talent that preceded her. Pro wrestling has historically been a male-dominated field, and even on truly national platforms like WWE and WCW, there were significant chunks of time when most of the featured female talent weren’t well-trained wrestlers at all.

Sable played a big role, as her character got massively over during the Attitude Era based on a successful storyline with a Marc Mero and her sex appeal. She found herself booked into high profile in-ring roles before learning more than the most rudimentary in ring skills, performing at a comparable level to Eva Marie. From there, WrestleMania 2000 included a downright embarrassing “Catfight” between non-wrestlers Terri Runnels and The Kat. WrestleMania 19 and 22 included similarly bad “Pillow Fights,” the former including The Miller Lite Catfight Girls who weren’t trained wrestlers at all.

Stephanie McMahon represented a different kind of low point--less rooted in sex appeal than storyline machinations that nonetheless included her being a terrible Women's Champion in the Attitude Era, for not truly being prepared to work a competent match. All of this is in addition to WCW putting women like Stacy Keibler and Torrie Wilson in matches before they’d been trained for even the basics of wrestling safely or with any kind of skill.

For all of Eva Marie’s limitations, and the arguments she could’ve come along further by now, she is at least competent enough from her experiences not to hurt herself or others in a simple, basic match.

Eva Marie Vs. Bayley In NXT

The peak of Eva Marie’s in ring career came in late 2015 when she challenged Bayley for the NXT Women’s Championship. The match came with the embedded drama that hardcore fans feared WWE might actually book Eva Marie to win. Bayley prevailed, but in contrast to the quick squash some fans expected if The Hugger were to win, it was actually a reasonably full six minute, TV main event match, executed at a high level.

To be fair, this was one of Bayley's best performances in NXT for making the match a success, and she rightly gets most of the credit for it coming across so well. It takes a performer with some skill to be walked through a match of this caliber, though. No one could earnestly call Eva Marie one of the best female wrestlers of her generation, but a performance like this is a testament to her being competent in the squared circle.

There’s a long history of poor, untrained female talent in the wrestling ring. Despite years of experience Eva Marie never became a very good wrestler. However, for her base line competence, and performances like her one opposite Bayley in NXT, she stands significantly apart from the very worst women to wrestle in WWE or elsewhere.