Tag: wrestling

Chickfight

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★★★½
“Probably the best American women’s wrestling DVD I’ve seen to date.”

This 8-woman tournament took place on October 2004 as part of All Pro Wrestling’s Halloween Hell weekend, in in Hayward, California and.was the first under the ‘Chickfight’ banner. If you’re used to the Diva “matches” [quotes used advisedly] put on by the WWE, this will come as a pleasant surprise – it’s closer to the Japanese style, where technical skill is more important than breast implants. Perhaps the most surprising thing is the length of the bouts: rather than being a five-minute distraction, 15 or 20 minutes being not uncommon. The wrestlers come from Mexico and Japan as well as the US, though they really deserve better than both the location, which appears to be a lock-up garage complete with a roll-up door on one side, and the crowd, the bouts taking place in front of an audience that hardly seems to number fifty.

That said, the women still give their all, and Sugey is probably the most impressive, both in her quarter-final contest against Candice LaRae, where she totally destroy her opponent into unconsciousness, and then again in her semi-final match versus Nikki Roxx, where the pair roam turn the entire venue into the ring. Meanwhile, the other half of the draw sees Cheerleader Melissa – who can now be seen on TNA as Awesome Kong’s “Islamic” sidekick, Raisha Saeed – move through the tournament, defeating her opponents, Tiffany and Christie Ricci. The contests there are more evenly-balanced, though probably also count as somewhat less memorable – the acid test being that they failed to distract us as much from the appointed task of packing up boxes, in preparation for our imminent move. The final is a steel-cage match between the Princess and the Cheerleader [which, if it’s not a Disney movie, should certainly be one], held on a later evening – likely a wise decision, since otherwise, the wrestlers would be fighting their third contest in one night.

To be honest, the finale was a bit disappointing, since we believe it’s not a real steel cage match until the phrases “busted wide open”, “mask of blood” or “Oh, the humanity!” are used. This was far more like a regular wrestling bout inside a wire fence than anything, and the cage also hampered the camerawork, leaving me feeling like I was watching proceedings on CCTV. It didn’t help that the commentators didn’t know the rules for the fight, and weren’t aware that escaping the cage made you the winner. Really, it’s a pale shadow of a cage match when compared to something like the 1997 tag-bout, Las Cachorras Orientales (Mima Shimoda and Etsuko Mita) vs. Kaoru Ito & Tomoko Watanabe. That, dear readers, is a cage-match [and can be found on our video page for April 2009]. Overall, however, it’s a good-value package with some quality content and despite occasional qualms about the production values, I intend to check out other entries in the series down the line.

Star: Princess Sugey, Cheerleader Melissa, Nikki Roxx, Christie Ricci

The Molly Holly Interview: From Hair to Eternity…

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Wrestlemania is the centre of the professional wrestling universe, and the list of women who’ve fought there is like a Hall of Fame for the sport over the past 25 years, with names like Wendi Richter, The Fabulous Moolah, Luna Vachon and Chyna. Wrestlemania XX in 2004 is widely regarded as one of the best ever, and part of that night saw Victoria beating Molly Holly for the women’s title, a result that led to Molly getting her head shaved in the middle of the ring at Madison Square Gardens.

How did Nora Greenwald, a former Subway employee, end up there and a two-time WWE women’s champion? Unlike certain “divas” (hello, Candice Michelle – though as she’s the advert spokeswoman for my employer, I’d best say no more!), Nora actually worked her way up. After training under Dean Malenko and Jeff Bradley, she wrestled at small events on the independent circuit in Florida before getting signed to World Championship Wrestling in 1999, where she was part of Randy Savage’s Team Madness. She eventually broke away from Savage, feuding with Madusa, but was released by WCW in the summer of 2000.

It wasn’t long before Vince McMahon came calling, and Nora’s new character, Molly Holly, made her debut on Raw in November. Molly briefly held the WWE hardcore title after a victory at Wrestlemania X-8 in 2001, and beat Trish Stratus to win the women’s crown the following June. Though she lost the belt back to Stratus later that year, she had a second title run from July 2003 through to February 2004 – in the 50-year history of the championship, only a handful of women have held it for longer.

But after Wrestlemania XX, perhaps Molly had nothing left to prove. Disenchantment with her use by the WWE grew – and it’s easy to see how, the women’s division entering one of its downturns, where wrestling ability became secondary to other, more superficial skills – and in April 2005, she requested a release from her contract. Since then, she has released an interview DVD, Shootin’ the Crap, and appeared at various independent events around the country. It was at the Impact Zone Wrestling show in Tempe, AZ, that we got to sit down with Nora, and talk about her career, her life, and her future plans…

What have you been doing since leaving the WWE?

Every day is totally different. I have so much stuff going on it’s ridiculous. I feel like I’m busier now than I was when I was travelling full-time. I’ve got lots of projects – my main income right now, is that I’m involved in real estate investments. I own a few properties, so I have tenants that I have to manage. I go to gymnastics every Wednesday; I go to a public-speaking club called Toastmasters on Mondays; I do massage therapy on Thursdays – I took a course so now I’m doing that at a spa. My church has a lot of fun things going on too: I just went downhill skiing for the first time in about 15 years.

Do you miss anything about life in the WWE at all?

I miss all of the people backstage. A lot of the crew were good friends, and I never get to see them – the people on TV are my friends too, but I can flip it on and see what they’re up to. It’s the guys behind the scenes – I miss them so much, and I never get to see them, because they’re not on TV. That’s what I miss most: the people that I worked with. I don’t get to watch it as much as I would like to: I try to talk to Devari, keep in touch with what’s going on. I also speak to Shelton Benjamin and Trish Stratus, and usually get my info directly from them.

Some wrestlers grew up knowing this is what they wanted to do, but you kinda fell into it…

Yes, the closest thing to being a pro wrestler was I wanted to be an American Gladiator for a while. I liked the look of the female body-builders, and thought they were really cool. I did powerlifting when I was 14-18 years old, but as far as being a pro wrestler, it wasn’t a childhood dream – it wasn’t even an adult dream. When I started wrestling it was for fun, not necessarily thinking that I was ever going to be on TV.

When did you start thinking that you could make a career out of this?

There was a girl named Malia Hosaka, who worked with me on the independent scene, and she knew some of the people behind the scenes in WCW, and she started to say “Hey, you know we could make a lot more money than in the minor leagues.” So we started pursuing that together. It was actually a while after, that I got signed but that was the first time, with Malia Hosaka – she put it into my head that we’ve got a good thing going here, and we could probably make a career out of it.

It was a big step moving from the indie circuit into WCW and appearing in the arenas with Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage. How did you find that?

It was amazing. Those are people I watched, growing up as a kid, and then there I was in storylines with them – I mean, I got to slap Hulk Hogan across the face! It was like “Wow!”, just an amazing thing. The first time it really hit me what was happening was, I was in a limousine leaving the arena, and I’m looking around: it’s Gorgeous George, Madusa, Macho Man, Sid Vicious and myself. They all looked so famous, and had the muscles and tans and the pearly-white teeth and I thought, “I can’t believe I’m in a limousine with these people.” It just didn’t feel like I was supposed to be there, it was more like I was watching it in a movie, that I was behind the camera. That was the first time I realized that this was a big deal.

As fans we only see the front-part of the show. Is there anything you were surprised to learn about that goes on behind the scenes?

I guess the one thing that really surprised me is that part of me was still a fan. I’m watching the show, and not realising that the people on TV were not always what they were backstage. There were a few people that I thought to myself that I really did not like, and then when I met them in person, they were so friendly and so mild-mannered, I just thought, “Wow, I was fooled.” and I couldn’t believe I was fooled. Because I do pro-wrestling, I put on that act myself, but I was just shocked at how nice everybody was!

Do you prefer playing characters that are like you, or those that are not like you?

I prefer to play characters that are like me – the baby face Molly Holly, with the Spike Dudley gimmick, when he and I liked each other, that was my favorite time. Although if I were to choose a character that was not like me. it would be something really loud and obnoxious and funny: aome clown character or something that’s a little bit over the top and funny or goofy. I’m not particularly funny or goofy, but I think that would be fun to do.

Do you get much input into your characters?

Sometimes – usually they’ll give you a basic idea of what they want, and it’s your job to make it your own or to try and make sure the fans can connect with that character. I have chosen all my own costumes; I wear whatever I want to. When I first became Molly Holly, they said, just make your outfit like Crash’s. So I looked at his and thought, how can I do a female version of that. I took some clothes I already had, and sewed some stuff on to make it look like Crash’s.

You wrestled with both WCW and WWE. Would you say there were major differences between the two?

As far as my wrestling career, there was no women’s division in WCW. The positive of that, is that when I wrestled in WCW, I got to choose my opponents; they would say, “Can you find somebody to wrestle you for this TV taping”. I’d be like, “Ooh, yeah”, so would take my friends who I’d wrestled on the indies – Brandi Alexander, Lexi Fyfe, Dee Dee Venturi, people that I came up with. I thought, here’s my opportunity to pay them back for all they’ve done to help me; I would bring them in and we’d do a Saturday night TV taping for WCW. So it was fun: even though there wasn’t a women’s division, that we still got to do matches on TV. With WWE, there was an actual women’s division, there was a little more structure, there were more storylines, and a larger group of women that all knew how to wrestle which made it easier.

What did you think when you first saw the Molly Holly action figure?

I was ecstatic! I heard rumours they were going to make one. And they came to the show, the Jakks Pacific people came, with a prototype doll and they showed it to me, and I was like “Oh, my gosh!” and had my picture taken with the little doll. I mean, that’s every kid’s dream to have an action figure of themselves. But it’s really a bizarre thing to see a little doll that looks just like you, that people can buy in the store.

I actually went to a toy-store when I heard they were out, to go get them, and there were some kids looking at the wrestling figures, and they had their Triple-H, and all these ones that I was next to. And the kids were looking for the guy wrestlers, and without them turning around to see who I was, I said, “Hey, why don’t you get that Molly Holly doll?” and they go, “No – she sucks!”

Do you find yourself getting recognised in the supermarket?

No, I work really hard at not being recognised. I rarely wear any makeup – I’m a horrible dresser! But I wear hand-me-down clothes or thrift-store finds – I don’t. Every now and them, someone will look at me, and feel they recognise me from somewhere but they don’t actually come up to me and say, “Are you…” They just look at me like they know who I am. But it’s pretty rare that someone will come and ask me.

[This is true. We were doing this interview in a room full of wrestling fans, waiting for the IZW show to start. Only one person appeared to recognise Nora – and, personally, if I’d been asked to guess, I’d have pegged her as perhaps a kindergarten teacher rather than a two-time WWE women’s champion! :-)]

What do you feel is the highlight of your career so far.

Wrestlemania XX. Getting my head shaved at Madison Square Garden was definitely the highlight of my career. What can you do to top that, y’know? There’s nothing more shocking. It was my idea, and Vince McMahon was nice enough to let me do that. I had mentioned it months prior, and it kind of got lost in the shuffle for a while there, but a few last-minute decisions allowed that to happen. Nobody really knew what was going to happen on the show and a lot of my relatives were very upset. They didn’t know that I was okay with the idea of getting my head shaved and they were like, “Oh, that Vince McMahon – how dare he treat her like that! She worked so hard for him!” They were really upset, but I had to tell them later, no, it was totally fine: it’ll grow back!

Did you ever have any qualms or doubts?

No, I had no second thoughts about it. My Mom’s a breast cancer survivor and she had her head shaved for chemo, maybe a year before I did the Wrestlemania thing, and she looked totally fine with no hair. So I thought, shoot, if she can do it, I can do it – let’s give it a try.

Your Christian faith is an important part of your life, which makes wrestling seem like a strange destination. Did you have any problems reconciling the two?

I think that Christians have a place in every occupation. If Christians only worked at churches, then we wouldn’t really know much about Christ! So I really feel that this was a great place to be a Christian and still be in the entertainment industry. As far as any conflict, there’s always things on the show that I absolutely hate – I think if I had kids, I would never let them watch this.

So I tried to share my faith more on a personal level. with the people backstage, and the fans after the shows instead of really bringing that out on TV. I’m just playing a character on a TV show: that’s my job. And so my faith and my acting weren’t really linked, except that it gave me a lot of opportunities to meet a lot of different people. Just the challenges of the job helped strengthen my faith as well: you really need God to help you get through that, without major mental issues!

Did you ever think about wrestling abroad, where women’s wrestling is taken more seriously, such as in Japan?

I don’t like Japanese women’s wrestling. I’m not tough enough for that. I think it’s brutal, I think It’s violent. I’m not really into violence – I like comedy and I like entertainment, but when it comes to actual brutality, I’m just not into it. I wish I could say I respect what they do: I respect their dedication, and their love, but I could never be that dedicated. These women, that’s their life, from the time they’re young to they retire. It’s just way too challenging for me! I have had a few offers to wrestle, in Japan and Italy and a few different places, but I just really enjoy being healthy. I wake in the morning, and my elbows work, I can turn my head – it’s fantastic! So I don’t have a strong urge to get beat up in the near future.

I don’t want to say I’d never go back, because you just never know. Maybe six months, a year down the road, something could happen, where they really want me to be a part of, and I might say, “That actually looks like fun”. But right now, I’m doing special guest refereeing and stuff on the indie scene. It’s fun to be a part of that, because on the independents, everyone has such a passion and heart for what they do. They’re not doing it for the money, they’re doing it because they love it, and that’s really a fun thing to be a part of.

Looking back, is there anything in your career that you’d do differently if you had the chance over again?

There’s lots of regrets, but none that you’d see on television. Most of my regrets were just, if there was a person in management that I didn’t like, or I felt was treating me poorly, instead of keeping it to myself, I would talk about it in the locker room. And I regret doing that because, it just brings negativity where there doesn’t need to be negativity. That’s my biggest regret: not keeping a positive attitude backstage.

Finally, if you were running a federation, and had to pick five women wrestlers to be in it, who would you choose?

Ooh! That’s a good one. Jazz, Nidia… [pause] Victoria… [long pause] Gosh, two left. The last two are going to be tough. Gail Kim…and… it’s such a toss-up. There are so many that I just don’t want to, oops, forget!

Well, we can leave the fifth one blank…

[Laughs] Yes, let’s do that!

[Many thanks to Nora Greenwald for taking the time to speak with us; thanks also to Chris, Justin, Steve and Robert for their assistance. For more information on Nora and her future plans, keep an eye on the website: www.nora-world.org, and we also recommend her DVD, available through noradvd.com]

Lipstick & Dynamite

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★★★★
“Lives up to its subtitle: The First Ladies of Wrestling”

I first heard about this film last spring, at the Cauliflower Alley Club convention in Las Vegas, a get-together for retired wrestlers and their fans. Two attendees, Banner and Martinez, talked about their part in the film, and we were immediately intrigued; a year later, I’m pleased to say this largely lives up to expectations. It takes you back to a time before pro wrestling was synonymous with the WWE, and the characters here are fabulous. They’re led by Gillem, now in her 80’s, occasionally difficult to understand (they subtitle her comments) but with a life that went from the ring to lion-taming. She’s merely one example, and the results are fascinating.

That’s not to say this is perfect film-making. There’s too little structure – a vague thread about an upcoming reunion is about all – and the film jumps about in history with little apparent purpose. There’s a vaguely misanthropic bent too, in that almost all men are rapists, abusive fathers or cheating husbands; it’d also have been nice to have the women wrestlers better located, culturally, in the era of which they were part. We get some priceless What’s My Line? footage, and we’d love to have seen more of this. Instead, it’s mostly talking-heads, and no matter how interesting, this eventually gets old . Much of the actual footage of bouts comes off the Wrestling Women USA DVD from Something Weird, and there’s also chunks from Pin Down Girl, neither of which are memorable.

But in the end, the subject is an inspired choice, and the film certainly does the topic justice. You’re left with profound respect for ladies who went against the mores of popular society and stepped into the ring, often sacrificing their health – and in one case, their life – for our entertainment. This documentary is a fitting tribute to these marvellous women.

Dir: Ruth Leitman
Star: Gladys Gillem, The Fabulous Moolah, Ida May Martinez, Penny Banner

Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters

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★½
“Interesting, only if you want a lesson on making a poor movie worse.”

After the excesses of Lady Terminator, I hoped for something equally as berserk here: instead, however, I got a reminder of why I sometimes hate Troma so much. Here, they took a fairly lame Indonesian movie (called, I believe, The Stabilizer) and handed it to the brother of head honcho Lloyd Kaufmann, who wrote a “funny” script and dubbed it: imagine What’s Up Tiger Lily with fart gags replacing all wit and humour. Here’s a sample: they make the hero an Elvis impersonator. Oh, hold my sides, for I fear they may split with laughter…not.

Fortunately, the DVD offers the option of the original soundtrack which is, at least, slightly less grating. The main plot there concerns a judo champion (Arnaz), lured into working for a criminal syndicate that stages dreadful women’s wrestling matches on the side. Her trainer (Prima) is actually a good guy, and together, they struggle to bring down the villains. There’s a lot else going on (the heroine’s kid brother desperately needs an operation), but it’s of no interest. Indeed, even the main plot is lame, and while the martial arts battles are okay, any entertainment value is more than negated by the horrible wrestling, which make WEW look like the golden era of All Japan Women.

I admit, I did laugh at the mud fight, which replaces Barbarian Queen 2 as the most gratuitous ever – one second our heroines are jogging along a road, the next… Otherwise, though, it’s easy to see why Troma opted to dub it, even if the end result stinks worse than week-old diapers. Why they bought it in the first place, however, remains a mystery.

Dir: Jopi Burnama
Star: Eva Arnaz, Barry Prima, Ruth Pelupessi, Youstine Rais

Rumble Roses

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★★★★
“Let’s Get Ready to Rumble…”

This is our first ever video game review on gwg.org, and just so you know I’m not making any of this up, here’s a synopsis of the storyline for this one, taken from IGN.com: “A sick and twisted half-naked scientist has decided to dress up like a nurse and hold an international wrestling tournament for the world’s greatest female grapplers. Once the women have entered, the evil doctor then takes samples of their DNA so that she can create a cyborg super-soldier to do her bidding for some unknown purpose. In the meantime, the mad puppeteer has also decided to brainwash all the contestants she’s met by turning them into an army of trashy, leglock-giving bad girls with skirts so short they should be called Smurfs.”

On the off-chance that you are not already whizzing out the door to your nearest electronics store to obtain this title, I’ll tell you more, but first a little background. I’m not a great computer game player, having completed precisely three in my life (Zork, Doom and Tomb Raider), but Chris bought me this for Christmas [how I love my wife!], so naturally I felt morally obliged to play it… The basic concept is straight out of Game Cliche Academy; a bunch of characters with various motives, get together to beat the crap out of each other in a range of interesting ways. See also Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Dead or Alive, etc. etc. The key difference here that while most offer a token woman or two, here, every character is female, which may be a unique feature for a Western release [there was an AJW game for the Playstation, but it was Japan only]

It’s kinda hard to decide whether this is feminist or sexist. There’s no doubt that these are strong, independent women who can kick ass with the best of them. Yet they also wear outfits which would prove structurally unfeasible in real life, and you could say the same thing about physical attributes resembling a multiple Zeppelin pile-up. Then there’s “mud mode” (left), which is exactly what it sounds like. Of course, this cheesecake aspect is far from unheard of: Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball took the female characters from the beat-em-up game and put them in swimsuits to play volleyball against each other. Yet, its roleplaying aspects made that one a favourite with our teenage daughter as much as our son. That’s unlikely here, shall we say.

On the other hand, the in-ring battles are still a step or two more credible than anything I’ve seen out of a regular all-woman federation in the US [I did enjoy the Heatwave show staged by IZW here in Phoenix, which was a one-off event], and approximately ten miles ahead of the farce that passes for woman’s wrestling in the WWE these days. Admittedly, in terms of personality, they’re from the shallow end of the character pool – teacher, nurse, punk rock chick, etc – but again, this compares not unfavourably with the sole flavour, Silicone Slut, available in the WWE.

My playing-style is your average button-masher, but it took me only an hour or so to beat the game with my first character – there are ten to choose from at the beginning, and playing through story mode in each one unlocks their alter-ego. Play through all 20, and you can be the bosses too, but be warned: the voice acting is horrible, and the storylines positively wince-inducing. In addition, you can play straightforward exhibition matches, and carrying out certain tasks, known as “vows” e.g. winning inside three minutes, can cause characters to switch from good to bad versions too. A problem here seems to be that you can’t have both alignments active simultaneously, so you’re not able to have Reiko Hinomoto (nice) take on Rowdy Reiko (naughty).

The controls are similar for all the characters, but they have different move sets, so that adds variety. Personally, I sorely wanted a practice mode (like Dead or Alive, for example); as is, the only way to learn is in actual matches, hardly the best way. I remain clueless about blocking attacks, but muddled through, despite some annoying occasions where my AI opponent seemed to perform a lengthy string of attacks that I could do nothing to counter. On offense, successful moves gradually fill up your meter (the yellow bar at the top); each completion gives you the chance to perform a lethal attack. Computer-controlled fighters tend not to use it immediately; don’t make that mistake, as a lethality, followed up if necessary by a pin attempt, is a good way to win.

The graphics kick ass. An awful lot of polygons (I believe around 10,000!) go into each character, with detailed hair, costumes, tattoos, backgrounds and other refinements that look good even on the biggest TV set. However, when the wrestlers run, it sometimes doesn’t work at all. The music is pretty lame J-Pop, so you’ll probably rapidly find yourself turning off the entrance videos too. On the down side, as well as practice mode, we could have used tag matches, survival mode, create-a-character, a bigger range of locations… The options present here are pretty sparse, though in gaming I suppose it’s usually better not to be a jack-of-all-trades.

Still, with all the different characters, there would certainly be plenty to keep the dedicated completist playing. I’m not sure I’ll have quite the stamina to do that, and it’s more likely to be the kind of thing I pick up casually for half an hour. It is definitely a guys’ game – our aforementioned teenage daughter used the word “nasty” more than once while spectating – and contains enough elements to have Chris’s eyes rolling, such as the mud and gallery mode. But as a crass, shallow, mildly guilty pleasure, it’s great, and despite some obvious short-comings with the story and lack of variety, as a wrestling game, it’s actually pretty good. Now, if you’ll pardon me, I must go ice down my thumbs.

Dist: Konami
Platform: Playstation 2

Women’s Extreme Wrestling

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★
“Horrible. Makes you yearn for the subtlety and wit of GLOOW.”

In my collection, I have DVDs from six different American wrestling federations, plus others from Japan. This is, by far, the most tedious and badly-put together. There isn’t an aspect here that even reaches bearable: the wrestlers are almost without exception incompetent, the announcers are juvenile jerks, and the presentation is truly dreadful. Shot at WEW’s first two pay-per-views at Viking Hall, Philadelphia on February 22nd and April 6th, 2002, it is frankly a mystery how the company didn’t immediately fold. But rising from the remnants of GLOOW, it uses some of the same “talent” plus porn stars, and still seems to be offering its X-rated mix of sex and violence – though this DVD entirely lacks the nudity promised by the commentators, which has presumably been edited out. Really, all the naked female flesh in North America wouldn’t have helped this – the only thing that’s “extreme” is some bad language, and while I could be wrong, personally, there’s more to being extreme than a potty-mouth.

The number of blown spots and flubbed moves here is almost uncountable, and the live audience seemed severely unimpressed: applause was sporadic and outnumbered by chants of “You Fucked Up!”, a nostalgic throwback to ECW days that brought a smile to my face. But I digress. GI Ho, Laree and Weed have some skills. As for the rest, I think every single woman at our local federation, IZW, could use them to mop the floor. Time is short, so let us gloss rapidly over the two commentators, who have the combined mentality of a single 13-year old, and finish on the incoherent presentation. For example, a tables match manages to edit out the actual breaking of the tables entirely; disc four contains repeats of half the disc one matches; and you don’t even get to see who won the final bout, since the DVD ends in the middle of it! The 4-disc set may run 210 minutes, and seem good value for money, but don’t be fooled. Setting ten bucks on fire and ramming it down your own throat would be more entertaining.

Star: Alexis Laree, Amanda Storm, Tai ‘Killer Weed’, Psycho Bitch

GLOOW: Hovember to Remember

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★★½
“Someone, someday will run a serious US women’s wrestling federation. GLOOW is not that group.”

I keep buying DVDs like this, hoping against hope to strike gold. Not to say it doesn’t have the occasional guilty pleasure, but knowing the name used to stand for “Gorgeous Ladies of Oil Wrestling” (the second O eventually became “Outrageous”), should give you a rough idea of what to expect on this DVD, filmed in November 2002 at the Pennsylvania National Guard Armory. If not, then bouts such as the Battle of the High School Virgins or Hardcore Bra and Thong Match should provide a clue, and explain why Chris was rolling her eyes at the prospect.

However, she’d probably admit it wasn’t quite as tacky as feared – no actual titties, and I definitely saw her smirking in the tag-team battle featuring midgets Little Louie and King Sleazy (and who’d disagree?). Nor could she deny that ‘Prime Time’ Amy Lee vs. Riptide, who cuts a great promo, was also a damn fine brawl. Though you couldn’t tell by moronic commentators Jeffrey J. James and Eric Garguilo, who give teenage humour a bad name, but at least the sound quality on the DVD was mercifully poor and their drooling frequently inaudible. Oddly, for a women’s fed, they had a man (Greg Matthews, from Tough Enough) wrestle champion G.I. Ho for the title. This was okay too, despite a cop-out ending that demonstrated another problem – watching this in isolation, you had no idea of the storylines leading up to it, or who half the characters were.

While GLOOW seems to have died, many of them are now part of Women’s Extreme Wrestling. It was from their Ebay seller, soprovideo, that I got this double DVD set, though buyers should beware: the discs took six weeks to arrive, were DVD-R (with the title written in Sharpie), and the second one refused to work in the player, and had to be nursed on the PC. Still, I only paid $6, not the $29.95 price on the site. Needless to say, that’d be far too much to pay for one memorable bout and a lot of juvenilia.

Wrestling Queen

  By

★★★
“Great for wrestling fans, non-marks may be less impressed.”

Despite the title, and the fact that Vivian Vachon is the most featured wrestler, the portion of this film which has much to do with women’s wrestling is actually rather small. It’s more a general overview of wrestling and it’s fans, during a strangely innocent era (the early 1970’s), before Vince McMahon dominated, when it still worked to give the illusion of a genuine sport.

Vivian Vachon was one of thirteen children, and with two brothers already involved in pro wrestling, it was no surprise she followed them in. This film follows her on a tour of the States, but it also diverts into her family history, and has interviews with her relatives, fans, other wrestlers, promoters and, it seems, anyone else who happened to come within range of the cameras. There’s also a fair amount of wrestling action, but this is probably the weakest point of the film; it’s edited, removing any flow, but they also only have a single camera at ringside, often making it hard to see what’s going on.

The interviews, on the other hand, are fab, though I speak as a pro-wrestling enthusiast, and action femme enthusiasts will likely be less impressed. But I find characters like her brother Maurice ‘Mad Dog’ Vachon, endlessly interesting anyway; with a voice like Bluto, he made the leap from Olympic wrestling to the pro ring 40 years before Kurt Angle. Some of the fan insights are also priceless, not least the footage of them getting seriously carried away. As a documentary on wrestling, it’s thus a hit – as a feature on women’s wrestling, it’s less relevant, but anyone who has ever been embarrassed by what all too often passes for women’s wrestling in the WWF, will undoubtedly feel a sense of nostalgia for an era when it was every bit as legitimate as the male version.

Dir: Don Chaffey
Star: Vivan Vachon, Maurice “Mad Dog” Vachon, Andre the Giant

The Fabulous Moolah, by Mary Lillian Ellison

  By

★★★
“A living legend proves she’s capable of both kicking and kissing ass.”

It’s ironic that this runs some 90 pages shorter than Chyna’s bio, given that Moolah had almost 50 years of experience before Chyna ever stepped into a ring, and also outlasted the Ninth Wonder, fighting a bout in 2002, on her eightieth birthday. Indeed, Moolah’s upbringing alone – the sole girl among 13 children, whose first marriage was at age fourteen – likely has enough material for a thick volume. Yet, despite wrestling in seven different decades, and multiple reigns as women’s champion over forty-three years, this finally peters out into insignificant sycophancy.

Of course, you expect some of this in any “WWE authorised” book, but the McMahons comes across here as saints, devoid of failings. This is despite Vince reducing the women’s division to a T&A/freak show from its 1998 reappearance, until Lita won the crown in August 2000. It’d have been interesting to hear Moolah’s genuine views on these tawdry gimmicks – in defence, her involvement was never as bad as Mae Young’s – but there’s no chance of that in this book.

This is a shame: its earlier portions provide a real sense of personality, and as a role-model for growing old disgracefully, Moolah’s wonderful. Her apparent belief that she genuinely held the title from 1956-1984, through pure skill, is more touching than plausible (and ‘forgets’ numerous defeats, e.g. a 1968 loss to Yukiko Tomoe in Japan). But generally, this is the grandma every child wants. Her stories ramble and, in all likelihood, are of questionable accuracy, yet that doesn’t make them any less amusing.

Wrestling Women USA

  By

★★
“As far as wrestling content goes, everything but the kitchen-sink.”

Another eclectic DVD package from the always-oddball Something Weird Video, this gathers together a whole range of stuff, from roller derby through pro wrestling to apartment catfighting, as well as the 1951 film Pin-Down Girl. It all adds up to 212 “sexy-but-savage” minutes of entertainment, by the time you’ve picked through a DVD menu that is about as far from intuitive as possible. So, let’s get ready to rumble…

It’s a shame there’s no date given for the six wrestling bouts – I’d say the 50’s, but that’s a guess. They seem tame by today’s standards, but, refreshingly, are also a million miles from the current T&A show. Indeed, given “accepted” behaviour at the time, these women are probably more transgressive. Commentary ranges from decent, albeit patronising (though the short When Girls Need a Man is worst of all), to bouts where the sound is post-dubbed and you get silly voices. Use the fast-forward button.

A pleasant surprise was the roller derby. Once I’d sussed out the scoring, I enjoyed a sport I’d heard of, but not seen, and I could appreciate why, at one time, only baseball and football had more spectators. Less amusing were Glamazon Living Room Rumble and several bouts of Amateur Outdoor Catfighting, clearly aimed at a different audience, shall we say.

From the director of Gun Girls, Pin-Down Girl has an optional commentary by cult icon Johnny Legend. It became a Mystery Science Theater 3000 victim, under its alternate title of Racket Girls, so it’d be foolish to expect Great Art. This, however, is bad in almost every conceivable way. The only decent bout is the Mortensen/Martinez one, though another scene suggests Martinez is the worst actress ever caught on celluloid (and against ‘Peaches’ Page, that’s some claim). Otherwise, women wrestling – and training – has never been so dull, and the ‘story’, about a bookie in debt to “Mr. Big”, is no great shakes either.

There’s no denying the quantity and variety of stuff here. However, is there anything I’d want to watch again? I suspect not much. The roller derby was about the only highlight, though Legend’s commentary on Pin-Down Girl is also definitely worth a listen – even if that means you have to suffer the movie once again… Definitely rent this DVD before you buy.

Dir: Various
Star: Clara Mortensen, Rita Martinez, Peaches Page, Mildred Burke, Mae Weston