Osama Bin Laden was still alive? I coulda swore they'd been propping him up like Weekend At Bernie's since '05. Be that as it may welcome to the 4th and final installment on the Pioneering Women of Wrestling where we'll wrap up the major players, snidely dismiss some of the ancillary accessories and finally be able to move on to weightier issues in the world of sports like what the hell is up with Mel Kiper's hair these days?
So in closing I've always seen the arc of women in wrestling during my lifetime as similiar to that of "Barker's Beauties" on The Price Is Right...it's been a long run, just work with me on this.
For at the same time as our tittilating trollops were making their mark in the late night syndication/Saturday morning UHF world TPIR was delivering its own triumvirate of tarts to the masturbatory masses every weekday at 11.
The standard lineup at the time featured Janice Pennington, Holly Hallstrom and Dian Parkinson-the latter pair later garnering further attention when they sued their lecherous leader over unwanted sexual advances causing dogs and cats everywhere to wonder whether Bob was actually the one who should've been spayed or neutered-and much like Sunshine, Precious and Chris Adams' concomitant concubines these triplets, though flawed by today's ridiculous standards, seemed wildly attractive at a time before outpatient plastic surgery, botox and gravity-defying wardrobes became the rage.
But perhaps the biggest coincidence between these cultural phenomena is how their overt sexual appeal was handled on a regular basis. Just like the early Girls of Grappling our Gameshow Gals spent most of their TV time looking pretty, but relatively chaste. For the valets it was a matter of standing ringside supporting their men in a variety of sequined tops and spandex bottoms culled straight from the Grand Ole Opry's Dottie West collection. While Janice/Holly/Dian ran their fingers around, but never on, an assortment of appliances, furniture ensembles and recreational vehicles clad in flowing dresses with shoulder pads big enough to frighten The Road Warriors.
Then just when we seemed to lose interest the producers gave us something for the Kleenex box, so to speak, with a risque romp designed to tease and tantalize. Whether it be the clothes ripping roll in the ring, mud pit match and public spankings of the wrestling world or the always hoped for "Fun in the Sun", beach-themed showcase complete with swimsuits and bikinis on The Price Is Right they seemed to know just how often to tempt us so that the anticipation was almost as good as the act.
But somewhere along the line they just gave up on the dance. Maybe it was the increasing ubiquity of men's magazines, the rise of the Internet or just plain laziness, but the powers that be decided "why bust our asses when we can just give you theirs" week in and week out. And next thing you know every episode of Raw/Smackdown/Nitro or opening game of PLINKO! began looking like Saturday night in The Bunny Mansion's Grotto.
1. Sunny (Tammy Lynn Sytch)- The moment, for me at least, that this whole thing jumped the proverbial shark was the day "Sunny Got Slopped".
Admittedly the sumptuous Ms. Sytch had been giving fans more of the goods than they were used to for some time with her low cut tops and skirts that made Daisy Dukes look like culottes. Then suddenly while managing the fitness-crazed Bodydonnas in their feud with the good ol' boy Godwinns Sunny got doused with the Godwinn's "slop bucket" turning a Sunday morning episode of WWE Superstars into a 15 minute, more angles than an NFL Replay Booth, nipple blaring wet t-shirt contest...and things would never be the same.
Interestingly the woman behind this defining moment of standards lowering hails from Matawan, New Jersey just a handful of Parkway exits from Seaside Heights the site of another "dumbing down of America" darling The Jersey Shore. Yet at a time when Snooki and The Situation were still a 6-pack of Bartles & Jaymes and a romp in the back seat of a tricked-out Monte Carlo from conception young Tammy was hitting the books and not the "boards" graduating near the top of her High School class before matriculating to prestigious Wellesley College to major in pre-law.
A year later with dreams of being a pediatrician she had switched to pre-med, thereby confirming Otter's claim in Animal House that it's really all the same, and transferred to the University of Tennessee to be closer to her HS sweetheart, Chris Candido, who was working for Jim Cornette's Smoky Mountain Wrestling. Under Cornette's imaginative booking SMW had become a proving ground for wild angles and new themes that would later turn up re-packaged in the WWF. When Candido's sexy, co-ed girlfriend showed up on summer break looking for work one of those themes became pushing the envelope of sexuality in wrestling and soon it was to Hell with Little Timmy's colic, slop bucket here I come.
At this point with Ted Turner's cash infused WCW beating him on TV and Bret Hart's monster contract strangling him like he just stumbled headfirst into David Carradine's closet Vince McMahon was ready to pull out all stops to save his sinking ship. So when Sunny's youthful good looks and sexy energy started garnering attention the Boss took advantage naming her host of a number of syndicated packages and getting her featured on MTV's Singled Out and Entertainment Tonight. She also began dating Shawn Michaels who, after getting dumped, accused her of fooling around with the then married Bret Hart. This all played out as a sidelight to the infamous 1997 "Montreal Screwjob" where McMahon/Michaels stole the title from Hart on a phantom tap out. True to her friend Hart Sunny walked out briefly in protest and by 1998 she and Candido were, not surprisingly, plying their trade in ECW and WCW.
There rumors swirled that Sytch was abusing drugs and was sometimes found passed out on locker room floors which presented a problem since that position was already occupied by Sandman and Scott Hall respectively in those promotions. Additionally, she had gained weight and the road had hardened her look. She took to wearing long fur coats to the ring in WCW which unless you plan on revealing a bikini underneath does not bode well for a female's prospects in this business.
She claims to have turned down a six figure offer from Playboy in 1997 which in retrospect may have been a mistake. The new millenium found her working the New Jersey Independent circuit and posing nude for Missy Hyatt's website in pictures that I'm sure were not quite as tasteful or, at 36 years old, flattering as Hef would've produced.
Throughout it all, though, she stuck with Candido until his untimely passing in 2005. Later that same year she appeared at ECW's "Hardcore Heaven" a tribute show for the growing number of fallen stars of ECW which by this point ranked ahead of coal mining, but behind altar boy on the list of the country's most dangerous jobs.
A true breakthrough pioneer for women in the business Sunny got her just desserts recently when she was named an inductee in the 2011 class of the WWE Hall of Fame. So to this original Jersey Shore Girl we say congratulations on an honor well deserved.
Generally the last woman to not look ridiculous in leopard print was Ginger Grant, but for Sunny we'll make an exception.2. Sable (Rena Mero)- It may be coincedental, but I've always viewed women with breast implants and Professional Wrestling in the same light. I know everything I'm seeing is not real, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy it just the same.
After all men like breasts or as Jerry Seinfeld once put it, "why would I be a leg man, I've already got legs." So let's quickly send a shout out to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony for if it wasn't for these leaders of the Women's Suffrage movement we no doubt would've had a topless President by this point...and that erotically endowed Chief Executive may just have been Sable.
Already a model for L-Oreal, Pepsi and Guess? Jeans-the latter a product that when it's label inevitably turns up on the backside of a plus-size woman in line at Wal-Mart takes all my self-control to not answer, "220?, 225?"-in 1993 Sable made the best cosmetic surgery choice since Matthew McConaughey's hair plugs (give up the charade guy, you had a comb-over in Dazed and Confused for crissakes) when she got implants to supposedly improve her self-esteem. In addition they attracted Marc Mero who at the time was doing a Little Richard impersonation as Johnny B. Badd in WCW.
In true WCW fashion Rena stayed off camera until Mero jumped to the WWF. Knowing the Sunny run wouldn't last forever Vinny Mac started grooming Sable for the sexpot role and pretty soon Mero had become wrestling's version of Hank Baskett being dragged along by his wife's industrial strength bra straps.
While Sable's popularity grew Mero dropped the Intercontinental Title to Triple H, worked a ludicrous boxing gimmick, lost a match to Toughman competitor Butterbean and jobbed for comic-relief grappler Gillberg with the Light Heavyweight Title on the line. That he was pinned by Sable at the Capital Carnage PPV after a "Crotch Shot" is not as surprising as the fact that at that point he even felt the blow at all.
Meanwhile FIT magazine had featured Sable under the headline "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World" and the April 1999 issue of Playboy with her on the cover became the single biggest seller of all time.
Still even silicon has a shelf life. By 1999 Sable and the WWF were on bad terms that resulted in her dismissal and subsequent $110 million sexual harassment lawsuit which surprisingly actually pre-dated the arrival of Randy Orton. She returned briefly in the mid-2000's to feud with Stephanie McMahon and manage "A-Train" Albert Bloom who I believe is currently enshrined along with Goldberg and Scott "Raven" Levy in the Jewish Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame that resides in Barry Horowitz' basement.
Nonetheless Rena Mero was nothing if not a woman of firsts: first to call herself "Diva", first to pose for Playboy, first to inspire Evening Gown, Bra and Pantie and Bikini matches/contests. In short a true trendsetter who changed the game forever.
Not real, still spectacular!3. Debra- If nothing else Vince McMahon is one helluva a businessman. His battles in the '80's with ex-wrestlers turned promoters like Verne Gagne would've been comical if they weren't so one-sidedly sad. For while Vinnie Mac catered to a new generation of fan by wedding his brand to music, fireworks and family fun Verne and the old boys network was still trying to jam anachronistic, hairy chested heels like Ole Anderson and Nick Bockwinkel down our throats. So when Sunny and then Sable flew the coop in the late-90's it was little wonder a woman like the pulchritudinous Debra Marshall was there to pick up the slack. In business they call it a cash reserve, for Mr. McMahon it was more like a "gash reserve".
Debra got into wrestling when her mother, who obviously never saw the film Blazing Saddles, gladly passed her number along to ex-Chicago Bear turned pro wrestler Steve "Mongo" McMichael. They worked in WCW from '96 to '97, but when "Mongo" predictably turned out to be a loose cannon Debra divorced him and moved onto the WWF.
At the time the McMahons were beginning to stockpile blondes (Terri Runnels, Tori, Ryan Shamrock), but with a heaving chest, killer legs and the butt of a twelve year old boy (did I just type that out loud?) Debra quickly rose to the top of the pecking order. Even winning the woman's title because her dress got torn off in an Evening Gown match with Sable.
Alas, she did not last long in the game, but her seamless transition in the wake of Sable's departure ensured that the folks who run the biz will make certain we will never be left wanting for the lowest common denominator again.
4. Wendi Richter- If only changing who you are in real life was as easy as it is in wrestling. In 1985 the true Texas ranch raised Ms. Richter chucked her trademark Cowboy hat, threw on a handful of glitter and enough eye makeup to make Alice Cooper look like an Ivory Girl and suddenly she was part of the Rock-n-Wrestling Connection (with Cyndi Lauper) and on her way to being the most popular women in the sport.
In 1984 she ended the longest reign this side of Marshal Tito when she knocked off 28 year champion Fabulous Moolah on MTV's Brawl For It All special and soon she popped up in Lauper's "She Bop" video and was defending the title around the world.
But the girls stopped having fun when Lauper quit the wrestling game and Richter began demanding more money. In the little remembered "Original WWF Screwjob" Richter dropped the title on a quick count at Madison Square Garden to The Spider Lady who turned out to be Moolah under the hood.
There was nowhere to go, but down or as they called it in the wrestling world at the time the AWA. There she feuded with a young Madusa before quietly slipping out of the game in the '90s to work in real estate and compete on the Dog Show circuit. A nice run for a seemingly nice woman who was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2010. Good job.
5. Lita (Amy Dumas)- A serial dater Ms. Dumas has gone through Matt Hardy, Edge and CM Punk on her way to breaking more wrestler's hearts than Stan "The Man" Stasiak. Her real contribution though is bringing attitude to the sometimes overly prissy women's division.
A true "worker" who honed her craft on the challenging Luchadore circuit in Mexico. My favorite memory of Lita is a style-clueless Vince McMahon continually admonishing her to pull her pants up before she went to the ring-a fashion trend, by the way, that is single-handedly bringing back Ricketts as kids today are forced to walk perversely bow-legged just to keep from dropping their drawers completely.
6. Dump Matsumoto- When you name your daughter Dump you're pretty much limiting her future prospects. When she grows up to be a 5' 4", 220 pound raging ball of PMS it's safe to say the Cotillon Crowd is not likely to come calling.
A mega-superstar in Japan, where her matches with Bull Nakano netted record breaking TV ratings, Matsumoto is included here as a woman who made the "Killer Female Heel" viable and opened the doors for "Healthy" girls everywhere to pursue their wrestling dreams.
Dump channeling her inner...Josef Mengele, I guess?!?7. Bertha Faye- And 260 pound Bertha Faye is one of those women to fulfill that goal. Often taunted about her girth by WWF audiences Bertha once screamed in an interview that she wasn't fat, she was big-boned. To which WWF crowds responded much like the comedian Dom Irrera who replied to a woman using the same logic that, "from where I'm standing it looks like you got some pretty fat, f---ing bones in ur ass!"
8. Heidi Lee Morgan- On the other end of the spectrum is Ms. Morgan who's twig-like build could make Calista Flockhart look like Beth Phoenix. If you have trouble believing Rey Misterio can take down folks like The Big Show and Mark Henry then you'd find it hard to fathom that Ms. Morgan could drop anyone larger than an Olsen Twin. Still she did in a career which saw her win the LPWA Tag Titles with Misty Blue Simmes and twice challenge Alundra Blaze (Madusa) for the WWF Women's Championship. In addition we are happy to report that no evidence turned up that Heidi Lee ever suffered from any ailment on the Eating Disorder scale unlike yours truly who has been diagnosed as Amnesic Bulimic; or, in other words, I binge, but forget to purge.
9. Woman- I know I promised this tragic superstar, but it's basically impossible to crack wise considering her unfortunate end. To learn more about her brilliant, but star-crossed career you can start here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Benoit
Hopefully we'll be back soon with some more old-school wrestling stuff plus a helping of baseball banality. Until then check out our page on Facebook or under the screen name "sprtcom102" at Twitter because apparently we we're a 14 year old girl in another life.
