Tag: Women’s Tournament

WWE women’s tournament to be named the Mae Young Classic

Posted on by Joseph Currier

This summer’s WWE women’s tournament officially has its name.

Triple H announced today that the tournament will be called the “Mae Young Classic.” The name honors Young, who the company has long held up as a legendary figure in women’s wrestling. She was 90 years old when she passed away in January 2014.

After being in the planning stages for a while, the tournament was announced at WWE’s business partner summit in Orlando over WrestleMania weekend. WWE hyped that it will feature a 32-competitor field and that 17 different countries will be represented.

The Mae Young Classic will begin taping on July 13th and 14th at Full Sail University, with tickets going on sale this Friday at 10 a.m. ET. It is being taped to air on the WWE Network.

Jim Ross has confirmed that he’ll be part of the announce team for the tournament, but no wrestlers have officially been revealed for it yet.

Dave Meltzer reported that those would be the taping dates for the tournament and that the plan is for the winner to later be crowned at a live special.

Women’s tournament coming to WWE Network this summer

Posted on by Joseph Currier

Confirming what has been known for a while, WWE officially announced that a women’s tournament is coming to the Network this summer.

The news was revealed at WWE’s business partner summit in Orlando today. An accompanying article on WWE.com provided the most significant development, which is that the tournament will have a 32-competitor field. That’s the same number that took part in last year’s Cruiserweight Classic.

WWE noted that the field will feature female wrestlers from “around the world” and said that it’s expected that 17 different countries will be represented.

Triple H and Stephanie McMahon were joined by WWE’s current Women’s title holders (Bayley, Alexa Bliss, and Asuka) to make the announcement.

The women’s tournament has been in the planning stages for a while. It was previously scheduled to begin in January, but Dave Meltzer reported that it was pushed back due to the company’s United Kingdom Championship tournament plans. Meltzer wrote that it was then tentatively scheduled for May, with Triple H confirming that it would begin in the summer in an interview with Fox Sports’ Wrestling Compadres podcast.

HHH confirms WWE women’s tournament, not a fan of intergender matches

Posted on by Josh Nason

In an interview with the Fox Sports’ Wrestling Compadres podcast, WWE COO Paul “HHH” Levesque confirmed that a WWE women’s tournament is happening this year, likely this summer.

The podcast aired a clip from the interview Wednesday with the full interview set to be released this Friday. You can listen below, starting at the 21:30 mark.

Subscribers to this site have known of these plans for quite some time, both from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and Wrestling Observer Radio. Dave Meltzer originally reported the long-discussed tourney was tentatively earmarked for May on the WWE Network.

Levesque said that the difficult thing has been trying to find the right time for the tournament, given their current schedule and the ever-changing landscape of WWE. He mentioned the UK tournament fit perfectly prior to the Royal Rumble and that he is hoping the women’s tourney can happen this summer.

The plan is to recruit very similarly to the WWE Cruiserweight Classic where they “scour the globe” and find some talents that may be flying under the radar, increasing the talent pool for WWE as a whole.

Levesque was also asked about intergender matches and while he understands that they may work for some smaller groups as shock entertainment value, he didn’t think the WWE fanbase would be ready for a male to be seen beating up a woman in the ring. He prefers the women being able to stand out on their own athletic merits.