The women’s division in AEW has been a constant source of conversation in recent days and weeks, and that talk reached a fever pitch Thursday when independent wrestler LuFisto spoke to Fightful, laying out her turbulent April 2022 experience trying out for the promotion. According to LuFisto, she was unable to speak to Tony Khan, felt a negative atmosphere backstage before and after her match, and had negative interactions with talent such as Dustin Rhodes and Ruby Soho. About one day after the interview with LuFisto went online, members of the AEW locker room, including Soho, began speaking out on Twitter, pushing back against LuFisto’s assessment of the division.
“The women in the locker room don’t just claim to be in support of women’s wrestling, they show it. Whether you see it or not,” wrote Soho on Twitter, who was called out directly by LuFisto. “The ones who don’t ask for credit after they stand in gorilla and cheer for two women who beat each other to a pulp for your amusement. The ones who lend an enhancement talent their knee pads because they forgot theirs at home. The ones who sit in the locker room with a sobbing peer for an hour to console her when she’s having a bad day. Those women are silent heroes. Just because the voices you hear are the loudest doesn’t mean those voices are speaking the truth.”
“This narrative that all the AEW women hate each other is quite frankly annoying,” said Taya Valkyrie, also via Twitter. “I’ve been there for [five months, and everyone], from the [second] I walked in that building, has been nothing but supportive, hyping each other up. … Stop pinning women against each other, it’s getting old.”
“The narrative going around is very disheartening considering someone says they want the best for women’s wrestling but buries it in a number of tweets,” Saraya wrote. “I will say being in this company close to a year, my favorite part is being with the girls in the locker room. They uplift, support, and laugh with each other every week and only want the best for one another.”
“We have an incredible women’s division that all look out for and support each other,” said Renee Paquette. “I’ve never seen it be anything other than a safe space for a bunch of kick ass women that all want to see each other and all of [AEW] shine to their full potential. Women hating women is a real dusty take.”
In response to what looked to be a coordinated PR campaign by the women of AEW, LuFisto took to Twitter to defend herself and express her disappointment in the reaction to her story. After posting her response, LuFisto de-activated her Twitter account.
“Good that everybody at [AEW] got the memo to write as much shit on me as possible so I can be … seen as a waste of a human being not worth [living], even people who never had a single conversation with me,” LuFisto wrote. “Even better to see people I never did anything wrong being so desperate to get a job, jumping on the bandwagon.”