Imagine any sport without its greatest competitors. Let’s take the upcoming European championships in soccer. What if World Champions Germany were not at the competition? Sure it would leave many nations with a better chance of winning the tournament, but it would also detract from the tournament itself, that such a historic and successful squad were not there.
This may well be the case at the Rio Olympic Games this summer as the most successful team in the history of women's soccer is threatening to boycott the competition in order to secure better pay and working conditions.
This should not even be a discussion in 2016 but the fact remains that despite the US women's team being vastly more successful than their male counterparts, they continue to be paid drastically less as well as being forced to play their major sporting events on artificial pitches.
Something that would never be imposed on the male professionals.
Respect for their craft and equal parity in pay for women is a hot topic.
In professional wrestling it is the most dominant topic right now. A concerted effort has been made to change not only the perception of the women within the industry, but also to show their work and dedication the same respect that male performers receive.
Looking at the shift in the landscape of women's professional wrestling the steps taken may have been slow but they have been significant.
From the mid-nineties women's wrestling has pretty much been non-existent as a true spectacle of athleticism. In WWE in the time of the Attitude era, the most lucrative and arguably most popular period pro wrestling has ever experienced, the women in professional wrestling were turned into mere eye candy to be used in storylines as nothing more than a sexual object.
At times the gratuitous way in which they were used did not include a storyline at all. Regularly the women would be trotted out at SummerSlam Pay Per Views (PPV’s), as a sexy palate cleanser between matches for a Bikini contest. Where colour commentator Jerry the King Lawler would shout 'puppies’ excitedly at the sight of a pair of breasts as well as making a string of lewd remarks.
They would be forced to compete in such ingeniously thought up matches like a Bra and Panties match. The ultimate goal being that to win the match, you must strip down your opponent to her Bra and Panties.
While many wrestling fans harp back to those days as the greatest in pro wrestling history. A lot of fans who want to see great wrestling by both male and female superstars are pleased those days are gone.
Ronda Rousey is a female Mixed Martial Arts fighter who has been most visible in taking up this charge. Dominating the female division of the Ultimate Fighting Championship for years and showing that women are not only just as capable as men, but can also bring eyes and money to the sport.
Rousey has transcended her own sport and gone on to star in Hollywood movies and also make an appearance in the world of Professional Wrestling. The moniker of 'Rowdy Ronda Rousey' in fact comes from her admiration of WWE Hall of Fame Wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper.
Her appearance at Wrestlemania 31 has been used as a catalyst to help refocus the world of Women’s Professional Wrestling.
Since Rousey’s face off with Stephanie McMahon at Wrestlemania 31, the industry has undergone some changes to improve their showcasing of women's wrestling. The introduction of the WWE Network gave wrestlers within the WWE developmental talent pool the opportunity to appear every Wednesday night on a show that would help them gain a strong following of fans who yearned for great pro wrestling.
Within the developmental pool were these performers; calling themselves The Four Horsewomen, a nod to a legendary wrestling stable of talent from the eighties, Charlotte Flair, Bayley, Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch began to put the wrestling back into women’s wrestling.
The quality of both the in-ring performances and the ability of these women's characters to connect with the crowds quickly spawned a social media movement to give more time at events and TV tapings to them to showcase women’s wrestling.
The hashtag’s #womenswrestling and #Divasrevolutions soon became frequent trending tags on twitter every time WWE aired a show on TV. Fans who responded to a survey I conducted want to see this progress in womens wrestling continue and even accredit it with being one of the main reasons they are watching right now, Carly Hendren is a fan of WWE but lives in Nottingham and said: "I am a huge fan of the women's division in NXT. The four horsewomen from NXT that moved on to RAW are just the first of first of a lot of talented women wrestlers that have really sparked my interest in wrestling.'
These women went on to make wrestling history in that they became the first female wrestlers to ever main event both a WWE TV show and also a televised WWE Live Special the latter in an Iron Man Match.
The impact of this has reached far and wide, and female wrestlers from the UK are greatly appreciative of the new focus WWE has put on its women's division.
Erin Marshall, who works under the ring name of Erin Angel, is an independent wrestler with a number of UK promotions and believes that the future for herself and other women wrestlers is bright thanks, in no small part, to the work done in WWE over the last two years.
Ultimately she has always been a fan of WWE saying: "As soon as I saw WWE wrestling on the TV I knew I wanted to be in the business, then when I was fifteen and went training I knew it was for me.
“I love what the WWE is doing for the women in the company right now"
The UK is a great place for female wrestling talent and that has seen the likes of Becky Lynch and Paige become household names on the main roster of the world's biggest wrestling company WWE.
Nikki Storm may well be the next British female to crack the big leagues as she is about to head over to Orlando, Florida and to the WWE’s NXT developmental show. I was lucky enough to ask her a few questions before she heads off on her latest wrestling adventure.
Nikki has put the hard work in to get to this stage of her career and believes that women’s wrestling is now rightly getting the attention at the highest level: "We are professional athletes who take real risks. We go to professional training schools to learn proper techniques. We train as stunt men and women and martial artists rolled into one."
While the scene is improving in most promotions for women's wrestling, it can still be hard to find enough time to really make a name for yourself among the much larger number of male wrestlers booked for shows.
There are notable women only promotions around the world, the most famous of which is Shimmer, and the UK is also making this an option for the growing numbers of female performers.
Empress Wrestling was founded in 2014 by Ben Ward and he is quick to point out that despite the many positive changes in the perception of women's wrestling, there is still one problem that other promotions don't have to face,: "Our biggest challenge is convincing people that the show will be just as good (if not better) than one full of guys.
While Ben is happy for the change in perception from the outside of women's wrestling, he fears that the majority of people who view the women's product in WWE still see the girls as just a sideshow.
"The people who have noticed the improvement the most are the people who already cared about the girls. The vast majority of people probably still see the female matches in WWE as a side attraction, albeit now a far superior one to what they've been used to in recent years."
The truth is though that at the minute there are a great deal more men in the business than women, time will tell if the current upsurge in the talents of female wrestlers and the extra opportunities given to them on TV and in live shows across many growing promotions will lead to a day when both the female and male stars are given parity on shows.
