How Nyla Rose's Championship Win Exposed Wrestling's Diversity Problem

It would be one thing to not understand what being transgender means but still remain respectful, but it's another thing to misgender her, harass her on social media, and chant transphobic and homophobic slurs at her during wrestling events. This type of harassment is just some of the behavior that can result in the killing and the suicides of transgender people. Her wife even tweeted that as a black transgender woman, Nyla Rose has lived past her life expectancy. She's only 37 years old. In case it wasn't clear, there is something VERY wrong here, and wrestling fans are continuing to put her in even more danger than she was already in.

At a recent AEW event, a fan "Code Of Conduct" was announced, with the idea being that being mean to wrestlers or staff members could result in getting kicked out and barred from attending any future AEW events. This could be a great idea if it was made explicit that bigoted behaviors or actions towards wrestlers or staff members would not be tolerated (plus, specifying the Code Of Conduct to be about bigotry would make it more clear that booing the villains is okay, since supporting the hero and booing the villains is basically what wrestling is built around in the first).

This probably should seem obvious, but until discrimination within the wrestling business and wrestling fandom are eliminated, AEW, among other wrestling companies, no matter how big or small, should take this into consideration. This isn't a totally new idea; at multiple independent wrestling events recorded and produced by wrestling streaming service IndependentWrestling.TV, ring announcer and photographer "StepStool" Sarah has made announcements that no bigoted behavior (or any actions that threaten the safety of wrestlers, staff members, or other fans for that matter) would be tolerated because wrestling events and the wrestling community should be a safe space.

AEW Executive Vice President Cody and his wife, Chief Brand Officer Brandi Rhodes have made it clear that diversity within professional wrestling is important, and even if they could be doing more to promote diversity (such as giving the women more time to wrestle, or hiring more people of color for the ring and behind the scenes), I have no doubt that Nyla Rose, and anybody else a part of the company who voices concerns about bigotry will be protected and have their concerns addressed. Still, it is massively important for the higher-ups to outright say that bigotry is banned and will result in removal from their events. This should be simple for any wrestling company to do, but for whatever reason, it isn't.

There still needs to be a major change within the industry to ensure everyone feels accepted and safe. More people need to step up and use their privilege to help those who work extremely hard to make it in the business while being their unadulterated selves so that the industry could become even more diverse. Trust me, both the wrestling business and the wrestling fandom could use diversifying. Representation will continue to get people into the wrestling industry, and diversity will continued to make wrestling a lot more interesting, exciting - and most importantly - inclusive.