Evolution 2025: Look how far we’ve come 

This past weekend proved to be a busy weekend for wrestling. First, alongside NXT’s Great American Bash, WWE hosted another edition of Saturday Night’s Main Event which saw the final match in the career of Goldberg in a loss to Gunther (and unfortunately, what could be a severe injury to Seth Rollins). AEW also put on their yearly “All In” show in Texas, which is probably the closest equivalent AEW has to WrestleMania in it being their biggest show of the yearly calendar. And to close out the weekend (and the main focus of this article) WWE put on the second ever ‘Evolution’ PLE. First happening in 2018, Evolution is of course a PLE/PPV consisting of only the Women’s Divisions of WWE and celebrate just how far women’s wrestling has come from the days of Bra & Panties matches & a Women’s Battle Royal at WrestleMania 25 being won by Santino Marella in a dress & wig.  

The event took place 10 years to the day the “Women’s Revolution” begun in WWE where Charlotte, Becky Lynch & Sasha Banks all made their main roster debuts on Raw, Charlotte & Lynch aligning with Paige to form team PCB, & Sasha aligning with Naomi & Tamina creating Team B.A.D (Beautiful & Dangerous). Bucking the trend of 5 match cards, Evolution consisted of 7 matches, with Raw, Smackdown & NXT all getting spotlights on their rosters and talented women they have. 

Opening the show, we saw Becky Lynch defending her Women’s Intercontinental Championship against Bayley & Lyra Valkyria. This was a match many wanted to main event the show and was a perfect pick to open the show as all 3 women are incredibly talented and got the show off to a fantastic start. It was a close affair, with all 3 women at points coming close to winning the title. Ultimately, following a Roseplant to Lyra Valkyria, as Bayley attempted to pin her, Lynch flew over & rolled up Bayley to steal the win and escape with her title in the first of several great matches on the show. 

Next, the NXT Women’s Championship was on the line, as Jacy Jayne defended the belt against Jordynne Grace, Jayne accompanied by the rest of ‘Fatal Influence’ (Fallon Henley and Jazmyn Nyx) & Grace accompanied by Blake Monroe (formerly Mariah May in AEW). The previous night at Great American Bash Grace & Monroe had defeated Fatal Influence in a Tag Match and prior to the show Grace had asked Monroe to follow her to ringside anticipating Fatal Influence would attempt to sabotage the match. Shockingly, Monroe was the one who ended up sabotaging the match, striking Jordynne Grace with the title while the referee was distracted allowing Jacy Jayne to pick up the win. 

Third, the Women’s Tag Titles were on the line as Raquel Rodriguez & Roxanne Perez had to defend their titles in a fatal four-way tag match against the Kabuki Warriors (Asuka & Kairi Sane), the recently established team of Alexa Bliss/Charlotte & NXT’s Zaria & NXT Women’s North American Champion Sol Ruca. Roxanne Perez of course filling in for Liv Morgan who was taken out of action with a shoulder injury a few weeks ago on Raw. Despite some doubts from Raquel, Roxanne was able to firmly prove her worth as the Judgement Day women were able to win the match and retain the titles which surely will make Liv Morgan pleased as she’s in recovery. 

Next, the Women’s Championship was on the line as Tiffany Stratton defended her title against Trish Stratus after they teamed up a few months ago at Elimination Chamber. In the darker years for women’s wrestling, Trish was always a highlight & strong presence in the division, apart from one segment where she was forced to strip down to her underwear and bark like a dog for Vince McMahon (again, Women’s Wrestling has come so far from those dark times). And despite being 49 years old, Trish is still going as strong as ever posing one of if not Stratton’s biggest challenge since she won the title back in January. Stratton was able to defeat Trish and make sure ‘Tiffy Time’ isn’t quite over yet. 

Next was the only match on the card with no title implications at all seeing Jade Cargill take on Naomi in only the fourth ever Women’s No Holds Barred match (also featuring Bianca Belair as the special guest referee). The rivalry between Naomi & Jade has been heated ever since Jade’s return and the revelation Naomi was the one who assaulted her months ago and took her out of action and Bianca was left the difficult task of watching two of her former closest friends brutally fight each other with her unable to do anything other than eventually count a pin. And that pinfall victory went to Jade Cargill, after hitting Jaded off the top rope through a table on Naomi to keep her momentum going from winning Queen of the Ring in the lead up to her SummerSlam title match against Tiffany Stratton. 

Penultimately, establishing what one would assume will be a pattern for any further Evolution shows, there was a 20 woman Battle Royal with women across all 3 divisions fighting to be the last woman standing to secure a World Championship match for Clash in Paris at the end of August. After a chaotic affair the match came down to Stephanie Vaquer who has quickly become one of the most popular women on Raw if not the company as a whole & NXT’s Lash Legend putting in a strong showing which no doubt shows what’s to come whenever she does make her way to the main roster, however Vaquer proved too much for her as she won the Battle Royal and securing a match for the Women’s World Championship in Paris. 

And to close the show we would get an early idea for who that would be as Iyo Sky defended her title against Rhea Ripley. Despite Rhea’s dominance across the last few years, even while in NXT Iyo Sky has always proved to be her kryptonite as she has never been able to defeat the ‘Genius of the Sky’ and was looking to finally break that streak and reclaim the Women’s World Championship that she of course lost to Iyo. Both women gave it everything they had and fought all over the arena, even into the crowd following the referee invertedly being taken out by Iyo Sky and preventing Rhea from winning the match despite getting a visible 3 count, then taking it into the crowd in frustration. However, no matter what both women did, neither one of them would stay down, even a Spanish Fly from the top rope showed no signs of either woman giving up despite being so worn out. 

But then, in a move no one saw coming. Despite still being banged up from her match earlier in the night, Naomi saw her moment and cashed in her Money in the Bank contract to make it a Triple Threat and create her own ‘Heist of the Century’ pinning Iyo to swipe the Women’s World Championship and end the night standing tall despite her earlier loss to Jade Cargill. Being on Smackdown and given her history with Jade, many assumed Naomi would likely wait to cash in the briefcase in a way that would directly screw over Cargill, and even without that again with the brutal No Holds Barred match earlier in the night, no one could have predicted Naomi would cash in when she did, and that’s the best kind of cash in (in my opinion) one that no one sees coming. 

The Women had a high bar to get over between AEW’s All In the previous day being so popular with wrestling fans, as well as a Beyonce concert also happening in Atlanta at the same time. And given the surrounding context of the show, it’s only fitting that the women managed to overcome those difficult odds and put on an incredible show which many are already calling the best PLE of the year so far. And with that in mind, I will end this article with a quote from Big E on the Evolution Post Show that summarises my thoughts perfectly: “Let’s please not wait another 7 years to do this!”