Be Better! We Are Not Done Evolving: By Albie Anne Troska
By Albie Anne Troska
I entered the sport of wrestling as a dancer that had never experienced anything other than a female dominated sport. I was always surrounded by mothers and daughters who all had the same lived experience as me. If I needed eyelashes, a girl always had spares. If something went wrong with my costume I could run off stage and a mum would be ready with safety pins so I could run back on stage and finish my dance.
I had a layer of naiveite that I would be treated the same in a locker room as I had been treated backstage. It never occurred to me that a locker room full of men would hold challenges I had never faced in comparison to the mums and daughters I had been raised in.
This became painfully obvious for me quite early on.
In my tryout a coach would walk up to me and tell me exactly where I should be feeling the exercises and touch the area. I didn’t find this weird till I realised I was the only person in the tryout he was doing it too.
A different coach stopped a training session in which I was the only women in the ring to tell me he was going to purposefully treat me worse at training to make up for all the special treatment I would get in my career and proceeded to tell me I was a “waste of time”. I am yet to have been given any of the special treatment he referred to.
When a coach took the time to train me, put an effort into correcting me, helped me develop a move set and a gimmick, encouraged me to try moves I had never even heard of, told me matches and people to watch who he felt I could connect with, gave me the time, effort and energy a lot of the trainers weren’t interested in giving me. He was met with backlash and awful rumours being told by both other wrestlers and trainers. He only had an interest in me because I was “hot”, I had to be sleeping with him to get a booking because I “sucked”, I was a stuck up bitch because I would check in with him over other trainers, he was wasting his time because the only time I’d be interesting in the ring is if I took my clothes off, a barrage of hateful, anger directed towards a 19 year old girl.
Before I debuted, you could count on one hand the amount of girls that were at the training school. We were all told there was an upcoming opportunity for 2 girls to debut on shows. We would be evaluated at training and it would be decided who would get the opportunity. There were 4 of us being pitted against each other, all of varying different skills and abilities. I personally did not think I was in a place where I would be picked over the other 3 girls being considered. We were asked to have training matches against each other to make comparisons, and we were reminded we were competing against each other constantly.
Eventually I was picked as one of the 2 girls to be rewarded with the opportunity to debut. I was happy and I am still eternally grateful for the opportunity. However, issues arose between me and one of the girls who was being evaluating but was not picked. Her internalised misogyny caused her to blame me rather than going to the root of the problem which was pitting 4 young girls against each other.
The comparison of women in the sport is unnecessary and creates an environment of jealousy amongst the locker room. The men around us were never pitted against each other in the some kind of competition as there has always been more than 2 spots available for the men on the card. But women do not have that same opportunity, there are still companies around the country that only give women the bare minimum opportunity and call it inclusivity. The target of the anger should be on the people creating the competition not the people competing.
There is an infamous story in my career that I have been told about that has made it’s way into locker rooms of companies I have never worked for and told by people I have ever met about the time a male wrestler refused to lose to me.
I was 21, a young women who was grateful to be on the preshow and happy to give the promoter whatever he wanted out of the match. I was not met with the same attitude by my competitor. He refused every idea I pitched, he threatened to leave the training school because of the ‘disrespect’ he was being handed. I tried to ask for help from a trainer and he laughed at the fact I was struggling. This story is passed around by men in locker rooms laughing at the idea that anyone would care about losing on a preshow match and it has been embellished on to the point it is no longer the same as when I lived it; but this wasn’t a funny experience for me. This was my first real brush with the sexism and misogyny I would continue to face. This particular man would go on the call me a bitch at training, he would track my location on Snapchat and call me a whore when he saw my location was at a male friends house. I then became violently aware of the fact I had to be very careful about my social media as the men around me were using it for their own enjoyment and benefit. Something every women in the wrestling community is aware of. In matches I fear of the wrong moment being paused and screenshotted to be posted about on social media for mens pleasure. I have had to have conversations with multiple videographers at shows and to remind them they cannot zoom in on my ass as I’ve noticed and find it disgraceful. I am hyper aware of what is yelled out to me at wrestling shows by audience members as it only takes one drunk man to yell something out to start the entire crowd chanting, sexist, demeaning rhetoric towards me.
Even when men try to show the same amount of respect towards you as they do the others it is phrased in way that continues to remind you it is not the same.
I am greeted by a vast majority of male wrestlers as ‘girl’. “hey girl” “what’s up girl” “how have you been girl”. Not by my name, not even by women. I am diminished to the term we refer to children by. I have had to put up a fight multiple times over what I can be referred to as. Just to make it clear. I am my own human who should not ever be referred to as X’s girlfriend/missus, Hoff’s floozie or anything else you can think of that ties my worth and existents to another man.
My bookings and enquiries are filtered through the men around rather than a direct email or message to me. Ideas are filtered through my tag partners because I am seen as unapproachable because I have no fear in saying no to the overtly sexual or demeaning ideas that are pitched to me.
Without the support of Adam Hoffman, Mat Gauge and my husband, I would not have made it as far as I have or become the wrestler I am today. I have met some of the most amazing people in my life in this sport. I have been given opportunities I would have never gotten to experience if it weren’t for wrestling. I have had a lot of amazing, wonderful times but it is important to use my privilege and platform to address issues that still arise and cause problems.
This sport has come such a long way since its original inception especially with womens wrestling. However, we are not done evolving. A lot of behaviours and attitudes still need to be adjusted and inclusivity on all fronts needs to remain at the for front of our minds.
My stories are not unique and unfortunately not the worst I have heard. I will continue to speak up for the betterment of the sport and hopefully hearing my stories will make it easier for other women to speak up and ask for the equal opportunities and treatment that they deserve.
