Delving The Depths Of My Shallowness

    Because you crazy kids have been there for me throughout this crusade to change the Blogosphere twelve angry ounces at a time it is with joy in my heart and Tiger Blood in my urine that I announce the launch of a Bowling Til'It Hurts Facebook page dedicated to this the only true written word sports humor blog on the internet- or in other words no videos yet as my technological ineptitude knows no bounds. So one man, one blog and one thousand Pabst Blue Ribbon empties later here's the link http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Bowling-Til-It-Hurts/144323018970626  Just hit the "Like" button and you'll be instantly updated as to my frighteningly depraved thoughts, inebriated ramblings and flesh crawling crying jags...it's like being one of my ex-girlfriends when the bars close. And please check back Saturday for Part 3 of our 4 part tribute to the History of Harpies in Pro Wrestling.
It's always the hot girl with some horse's ass...

A Carnal Chronicle Of Cleavage; Or Seminal Sluts Redux

    Sorry for the delay on this post, but tax deadlines reared their ugly heads. If this excuse is not acceptable please feel free to flip over to Willie Nelson's Blog this time next year as I don't believe he allows himself to be burdened by such trivialities. Now back to our sociological study of sluttiness.

    If my dating life, such as it is (was?), has taught me anything it's that the best way to extend the life of most endeavors is to start by setting the bar way down low. If you can survive the Drive Thru at White Castle suddenly appetizers at Applebee's is looking like Foie Gras at the Waldorf.

    Fortunately for Diva-dom the pioneers of our previous post (Sunshine, Precious, et.al.) left plenty of room for growth. And between the expansion of cable TV, Vince McMahon's marketing acumen and advancements in breast augmentation by the late 80's the tawdry acorn had begun to sprout into the sleazy oak.

    Syndicated TV, over the top characters and the WWF's promotion machine spurred Pro Wrestling into the entertainment mainstream and began attracting a higher class of harlot who had long been trapped in a too good for porn/too trashy for catalog modeling conundrum. We're still a safe distance from the super-model in tights phase, but unlike Hitler's early 1920's "National Socialist Bird Watching Society" this group is moving in a more positive direction.

1. Misty Blue Simmes- How bad was the state of women's wrestling in the 1980's? Consider that in her very first match the reasonably attractive Miss Simmes was handed not one, but two titles as promoters grasped at any straw to save this fast sinking sphere of their psuedo-sport. Prior to Simmes arrival on the scene this area was dominated by two types- the fat and aging as represented by the Fabulous Moolah and Judy Martin or emaciated platinum blondes who appeared to step directly from a Double-Wide to the ring with a slug of Boone's Farm for courage along the way as manifested in Debbie Coombs and Candi Devine. With sort of a Pat Benatar meets Morgan Fairchild look Misty Blue was light years beyond the Moolah group and a step up from Coombs/Devine. Problem was with the competition so lean and regionalized it was hard to find a place to settle and women to do the job often enough to build Simmes into anything more than a "One and Done" distraction in any territory. According to her won/lost record at OWW she wrestled female jobber Kat LeRoux so often it's a miracle she didn't contract Feline Aids and she was further hindered by mic work that could make Marcel Marceau look like Jimmy "Mouth of The South" Hart. After working the ill-advised LPWA for two years without being paid she decided to chuck wrestling for other endeavors which include working as a bodyguard for the Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1991 (sounds like they run a tight ship over there) and developing a stand-up routine with her husband in the 2000's.
Stylist: What can I do for you? Misty Blue: Gimme the Leather Tuscadero look, please.

2. Dark Journey- The Rosa Parks of wrestling. DJ is credited as being the trailblazer for women of color in the business as noted at BlackRasslin.com, a website that by its very name has done more to undermine the African-American experience in pro wrestling than a Tony Atlas interview and the One Man Gang's "Akeem the African Dream" persona combined. She was discovered as a teenage stripper by "Dirty" Dick Slater, who would later be shot in a bar brawl by Wahoo McDaniel and spend a year in jail for stabbing a girlfriend, so the fact that she survived to run a successful boutique in Los Angeles is a success story by itself. Her most notable feud was with Missy Hyatt (see below) where she legit chipped Hyatt's tooth, pulled out clumps of her hair and broke two of Missy's toes and her thumb. In retaliation Hyatt referred to Journey as a "cocaine-addicted bitch" on the weekly Mid-South TV show. And regional promoters wonder how Vince McMahon stole the "family viewing audience" from them in the mid-80's...hmmm.

3. "Sensational" Sherri Martel- If you need an idea how seamy was the underbelly of the wrestling biz in the 1980's think about this: by the time she was 19 Sherri Martel was a married and divorced single mom living off food stamps and stripping in a trailer park in Louisiana. She then took up wrestling which allowed her to travel around the world, be profiled with Randy Savage on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and earn millions of dollars. Yet her mother barred all wrestlers from Sherri's 2007 funeral blaming her daughter's death from alcohol and drug abuse on the world of Sports-Entertainment. And considering the number of wrestlers who have died from similiar circumstances before reaching their 50th birthday it's actually hard to argue with her.
    For the record the Sensational One died in June of '07 from an overdose after lying for three depressed months on her mother's couch in Birmingham, Alabama like the protagonist in Fred Exley's A Fan's Notes. But like Chandra Levy her death was mostly forgotten when the 9/11 of the wrestling world, the Chris Benoit murder/suicide, occurred one week later. That was unfortunate for her legacy since there was little time to dwell on what was, by any standard, a fine career highlighted by her role in one of the Top 20 greatest matches of all-time, an AWA blade-fest between the Midnight Rockers (Marty Janetty and Shawn Michaels) and the Martel managed "Playboy" Buddy Rose and "Pretty Boy" Doug Somers in which even Sherri's full length white dress was soaked in blood.
    In addition, Martel held pretty much every women's title of any significance during her career, managed several tag team champions and was a "honoree" of the presitigious Cauliflower Alley Club as early as 1994. Not bad for a woman who was kicked out of Fabulous Moolah's Wrestling School for drinking/drugging. A feat that ranks with drummer Steven Adler's bouncing from Guns & Roses under the heading "You May Have A Serious Problem". RIP.
With Ted DiBiase looking like, well, a million bucks...

4. Baby Doll (Nickla Roberts)- When your bio lists you as a "High School State Shot Put Champion" the reader is no doubt bound to conjure up images of meaty East German women with enough chin hair to qualify as the 4th Little Pig. So when Nickla Roberts began her career managing "The Half-Breed Heathrob" Gino Hernandez as Andrea the Giant, an early version of Chyna, it seemed perfectly plausible. When she showed up in Crockett Promotions managing Tully Blanchard as Baby Doll-The Perfect 10 it was...well let's just say I had an easier time believing Buddy Rose weighed 217 pounds or Baron Mikel Scicluna owned half of Malta.
    Not that Roberts didn't have a bit of a sexy full-figured thing going on like, say, the woman who hosts The Biggest Loser. It's just that at her best she was no more than a 6/drunken 7 and like a chubby cheeked yet curvaceous Delta Burke in HBO's First & 10 you knew she was a Krispy Kreme or quart of Haagen-Dazs from going all to pieces.
    Still you can credit Roberts with at least being true to her heart when in 1986 she married wrestler Sam Houston despite warnings she'd be fired by the Crocketts if she did. Even worse they shipped her to the dying Central States Wrestling region out of St. Louis where she probably got to witness Harley Race win the NWA Title for the 27th or 28th time (who could keep count) before drifting out of the business by the 90's.
    According to various online sources she is divorced from Houston, currently works as a security guard at Wal-Mart and is dating "some guy named Timber". Not exactly comparably to the fate of Bo Derek, but for a fleeting moment at least they had one thing in common.
Ah yes, spandex with a belt, it's gotta be the '80s!

5. Missy Hyatt- The self-proclaimed "First Lady of Professional Wrestling"; let's just say Bess Truman or Mamie Eisenhower she's not. She has a degree in Psychology from Marymount College, but it didn't take 4 years of studying Freud and Jung for her to figure out how the male mind functions. With billowing bleach blonde hair, bulbous breast implants and a wardrode of tops and skirts that could double as dinner napkins Hyatt was, from an early age, all about giving the boys what they want.
    The first of many wrestlers to get what she was offering was "Hollywood" John Tatum who she began dating in 1985. Next thing you know Missy's star was on the rise courtesy of a lascivious "Mud Pit Match" with Sunshine at WCCWs annual Texas Stadium show. When Tatum's career did not similiarly take off Hyatt moved on to "Hot Stuff" Eddie Gilbert and the Universal Wrestling Federation in 1987.
    There she began building a reputation on the kind of Diva work we know so well today- cacophonous quantities of cleavage, erotic entrances and plenty of good old fashion clothes ripping cat-fights. Soon Vince McMahon came calling asking her to replace "Piper's Pit" with a segment called "Missy's Manor", but in an effort that could make JaMarcus Russell and Michael Myers' "Cat in The Hat" avert their eyes Hyatt botched the sure thing and the potential dawning of the Divas Division sadly gave way instead to "Adorable" Adrian Adonis' Flower Shop.
    Ultimately Vince would offer her a job as a WWF Dancer which she refused calling the position "beneath her". Considering she'd wrestled in mud, been spanked by Lance Von Erich and dated actor Jason Hervey (The Wonder Years), 9 years her junior, when he was still in high school these were tough words indeed. For her troubles Hyatt was hired by WCW where in 1993 she entered the offices to find a blownup pic of her topless adorning the wall. She protested and in the worst business move since the guy who ran the Credit Default Swap desk at AIG Eric Bischoff fired her. One lawsuit and out of court settlement later Missy moved on to ECW and WCW moved on to bankruptcy proceedings.
    In ECW Hyatt was infamously front and center in the Paul Varelans-Taz "Shoot Fight" incident where MMA fighter Varelans agreed to tap out to Taz in exchange for fellatio from the "First Lady". When Varelans did his "job", but Missy did not reciprocate in kind he tore up the dressing room in a fit of anger to which I say, get over yourself. I mean if I had a dollar for every time...
    Anyway today Hyatt along with other 40-plus valets/wrestlers like Tammy "Sunny" Sytch and Malia Hosaka appear semi-nude on her website "Wrestling Vixxxxens" whose ridiculously superflous spelling reminds me of those beer-bellied, rec league softball players who think wearing number 69 is somehow clever. Nonetheless she took the genre to a new level and for that horny teenagers everywhere are grateful.
Missy Hyatt: a woman who gave new meaning to the wrestling phrase "jobber".

We know, we know Miss Elizabeth is coming in the next post plus Woman, Chyna and the frankly frightening Luna Vachon. Check back before Easter.

Seminal Sluts of the Squared Circle

    In my 6 or so months as an Internet satirist of the inane and insipid in the world of sports I've tried to cover a good deal of psuedo-intellectual ground. I've limned the literary from Dos Passos to Dostoyevsky, researched the rich repository of Rock-n-Roll, mined the milieu of the American TV sitcom and poked fun at the train wreck that is modern day Pop Culture on my personal  Indifferent Torpedo of Torpor/Sobriety Is Not An Option Tour de Farce. Yet despite this not inconsiderable effort to bring depth and nuance to the sports blogging abyss to date my most popular post with over 2000 page views and counting is a cynical slideshow of implant irony and vagina jokes on Bleacher Report entitled "The Top 10 Knockouts of TNA Wrestling" (http://bleacherreport.com/articles/632824-top-10-tna-knockouts-angelina-love-velvet-sky-tnas-other-beautiful-people).

    However, unlike Van Morrison who once moaned to a reporter that, "all fans want to hear are my f---ing hits" (yes, but that's why you're allowed to be a fat, obnoxious, drunken sot...and isn't that what it was all about anyway?) I have decided to embrace the sphere to which it seems I am sadly suited. So without further intro here is my archaeological attempt to unearth the origins of the ever growing and insanely popular titillating and erotic side of Professional Wrestling...plus there's pictures! Mazel Tov!!

    Now it only figures that the likes of  current wrestling hotties such as Maryse, Angelina Love, Kelly Kelly and Velvet Sky were not immaculately concieved into our livingrooms fully quaffed and rouged like some member of the Judd family (my kingdom for the head of a male Judd!). But it is a fact that the ubiquity of these tantalizing tarts today makes us forget there is a long, hard history preceding this ultimate tease.

    So we can start by saying that behind every good man there's a good woman, but based on the outwardly loose morals of the women chronicled below chances are it was as often as not the other way around. As these earliest incarnations of today's Divas and Knockouts used whatever womanly assets they could muster to ingratiate themselves to more than willing to oblige grapplers in exchange for the chance to finagle their way onto television and into our post-pubescent Saturday morning TV fantasies.

And in the beginning there was...

1.Sunshine- Alright maybe she wasn't technically the genesis of this genre, but my first recollection of a wrestler being accompanied to the ring by anyone other than a fat ex-Heel (Fred Blassie, Captain Lou Albano) or loud-mouthed Jew (The Grand Wizard, Eddie Creachman) was when the syndicated World Class program found it's way to a late night MSG time slot and Jimmy Garvin was seconded by this impish blonde. Sunshine was actually Garvin's cousin so hopefully she didn't "earn" this role as alluded to above, but she certainly wasn't without her charms. Basically she was to wrestling kinda what Mary Ann was to Gilligan's Island- a non-threatining cutie who you still felt under the right circumstances you might have a shot with. The type of girl who was "local hot", but not so hot that you'd be afraid to ask her for a pencil in Math class and when she inevitably produced one made you feel like you were a "player". In short, a destitute man's Courtney Thorne-Smith and ultimately an early taste of what women could provide the world of sports entertainment.
OK so Torrie Wilson she's not, but hey you gotta start somewhere.

2. Precious- We've all done stupid things in our younger days- drink till we puke, drug ourselves to incoherence, pretend to like Jim Morrison's poetry album (which come to think of it may be related to the previous stupidity) and the like. For Precious this list also apparently includes her leap into the seedy world of 1980's Pro Wrestling. When Sunshine moved on Jimmy Garvin decided to coax his then (and current) wife Patti Williams into the valet role under the psuedonym Precious. According to an August 2010 Charlotte Observer article (yes, sometimes I actually click 2 or 3 Google pages in during my research) Williams accepted reluctantly and seems to feel uneasy about her role to this day. Though she appeared on TV and at major events throughout Texas, Georgia and the Mid-Atlantic region her bio is blank at the Online World of Wrestling website and her page has been pulled for a "G10 violation" (which I believe is the same reason George Costanza couldn't return that book of French pastoral paintings he took to the bathroom in Brentano's) at Wikipedia. Now if I could only do the same with this Tijuana purchased lower back tattoo...

3. Jeannie Austin- Jeannie Austin went through wrestlers like Angelina Jolie goes through Third World babies. From 1978 to 1991 she married and divorced in succession "Gentleman" Chris Adams, Billy Jack Haynes and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin though she later admitted the Haynes coupling was arranged to keep her from being deported back to the UK. Her most indelible contribution to the business, however, comes from being credited as the inspiration for Steve Austin's ultimate gimmick when she told him to "drink his tea before it gets stone cold". Not exactly a killer tale for one of the greatest bad ass personas ever developed. Sorta like finding out the band Jethro Tull was named after a 17th Century agriculturalist who invented the "seed drill"...true story.
Again not making anyone forget Trish Stratus, but she knew how to match a dress to the ring steps.

4. Toni Adams- Apparently when it came to picking up women "Gentlemen" Chris Adams had a rap that fell somewhere between the formality of Tennessee Williams' "Gentleman Caller" in The Glass Menagerie and comedian Doug Benson's pickup line, "my penis just died can I bury it in your ass." Obviously Adams dangled the prospect of D-list TV stardom in front of unsuspecting damsels and like Jeannie Austin before her Toni Lea Collins took the bait becoming Toni Adams and "Gentleman" Chris' valet/manager in the mid-80's. For her trouble Mrs. Adams would wind up having her top torn off on camera by Tojo Yamamoto, be the "spankee" in a "Loser Gets Spanked Match" with Billy Travis and in a more distressing real life incident get assaulted by a drunken Chris Adams precipitating their divorce. She continued working through the mid-90's feuding with such forgettable ladies as Sweet Georgia Brown and Dirty White Girl and managing mid-card marauders like Iceman King Parsons and Brian "Grand Master Sexay" Christopher. Sadly Adams passed away at age 45 from an abdominal abcess infection similiar to the type that killed David Von Erich.
Now things are moving in the right direction though not sure if she was managing Gold Dust at this time or that's a bodysuit under her jacket here.

5. Miss Linda- When it comes to Rock bands I have a very simple rule. That is I'll never follow groups that use more makeup or hair spray than my mother. Thus I am not a member of the KISS army and I pretty much sat out the whole Motley Crue/Poison/Whitesnake era listening to Molly Hatchet and The Charlie Daniels Band. If Miss Linda wanted to make it big in wrestling she might have been better off heeding my rule before she decided to hook up with "Exotic" Adrian Street in the '70's and '80's. As his nickname implies Street was a unique act. He draped himself in clashing tie-dyed colors, painted his face back when the Road Warriors were "bouncing" drunks at Chicago frat parties and wore his bleached blonde hair in mini-pigtails. Next to this Human Jackson Pollock painting Miss Linda never stood a chance of getting noticed. She briefly tapped into some latent Blackfoot blood for a Native American gimmick that never took off before finally settling in as Street's "stylist" throughout a career spent mostly in the Triple-A of the wrestling world. But in one of the few happy endings for these Gloria Steinem's of the Slammin' Set The Exotic One and Miss Linda were married in 2007 and currently run a successful ring attire business. So that's nice.

That's all for know, but we'll be back on Tuesday with the next installment featuring Missy Hyatt, "Sensational" Sherri Martel, Baby Doll and Elizabeth.

Modeling Socks On The Radio

When I set upon my journey of trying to become the "Charles Bukowski of Sports Journalism" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bukowski I expected a lot of things: tremors, dyspepsia, nausea, explosive diarrhea, palpitations, projectile vomiting, acute pancreaitis and the occasional case of dropsy (people still get that, right), and believe me I have not been disappointed. What I did not expect is the outpouring of support I've received, particularly from some two dozen loyal readers who "didn't just save my life, but made my life worth saving" (McCormick & Jojo, copyright 1986). You guys are truly the wind beneath my wings, the handful of hair that pulls me from the toilet bowl, the shove that rolls me so I don't drown in my own bile...and to show my appreciation here's a slideshow of big breasted women and misogynistic jokes. God, I love you mugs... http://bleacherreport.com/articles/632824-top-10-tna-knockouts-angelina-love-velvet-sky-tnas-other-beautiful-people


 "...and this one's for Bucky 'Freakin' Dent..."