Former Wrestlers Speaks Out Against Allegations That Led to WWE Removing Fabulous Moolah's Name from Battle Royal

[Victator]

Well here is the issue, wouldn't other people hear about it? How many secrets are successfully kept in wrestling? It seems like the aggressiveness toward this woman (lady being interviewed) is because she is not saying what some people want to hear. I think she is wrong about Moolah ripping off the women on money. Which is the only concrete thing we know Moolah has done. But that is a common mentality with authoritarians who back the employer no matter what.

I don't think Moolah ever contributed much to women's wrestling. She was selfish and padded her own wallet while never creating a star. Wendi Richter might count, but I think you could have put any established female star in the champion role and gotten similar results, Though Moolah was such an old crone, she made a good antagonist for the Rock and Wrestling Richter.

That all said, beyond Luna Vachon, we don't have a first hand account of Moolah doing the things she is being accused of. Even in Luna's version, it did not involve sex or drugs.

Even Sweet Brown Sugar's story is second hand from her family.

The accusations are not nearly as solid as everyone acts like they are.

[Jesse Ewiak]

I mean, even if Moolah did nothing of the pimping and sexual abuse, she'd still be terrible for turning women's wrestling to a money drawing thing to a sideshow.

[Bix]

Well here is the issue, wouldn't other people hear about it? How many secrets are successfully kept in wrestling? It seems like the aggressiveness toward this woman (lady being interviewed) is because she is not saying what some people want to hear. I think she is wrong about Moolah ripping off the women on money. Which is the only concrete thing we know Moolah has done. But that is a common mentality with authoritarians who back the employer no matter what.

 

I don't think Moolah ever contributed much to women's wrestling. She was selfish and padded her own wallet while never creating a star. Wendi Richter might count, but I think you could have put any established female star in the champion role and gotten similar results, Though Moolah was such an old crone, she made a good antagonist for the Rock and Wrestling Richter.

 

That all said, beyond Luna Vachon, we don't have a first hand account of Moolah doing the things she is being accused of. Even in Luna's version, it did not involve sex or drugs.

 

Even Sweet Brown Sugar's story is second hand from her family.

 

The accusations are not nearly as solid as everyone acts like they are.

 

Lady Maxine is still alive and has continued to make her firsthand accusation.

[sek69]

Is it really surprising that the dark side of women's wrestling during the 60s to the 80s was easily hidden? We're talking about a sideshow of a sideshow where not many people beyond the hardest of the hardcores know much about the non steroid related darkness of men's wrestling during the same time?

 

There's also the matter than there were probably not many people in the business that really gave a shit how the women wrestlers were treated back then. That's kind of how Moolah was able to get and maintain her position, there really wasn't anyone around who cared enough to do anything about.

[Mad Dog]

Look how long it took to really expose something like Scientology.

[Loss]

Also, it's pro wrestling. It's still a shady business even today, but it's nothing like it was then.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Look how long it took to really expose something like Scientology.

Now I want Moolah to have also been the real author of "Dianetics". Her Thetan levels must have been off the charts.

[Herodes]

Presumably everyone who is (rightly) calling out Moolahs history of abuse against women will be boycotting the Saudi show?

[Mad Dog]

Presumably everyone who is (rightly) calling out Moolahs history of abuse against women will be boycotting the Saudi show?

 

Yep. We're all not spending any money on it...

[shakla]

At this point, you'll never be able to prove or disprove any of this fully. The Sweet Georgia Brown article, which seemed to be the backbone of the anti-Moolah defense, came off as flimsy hearsay to me. And then you have her son standing in front of Moolah's house saying his sister was bitter and exaggerated or lied about what was said in the article.

[sek69]

What about Lady Maxine's story though?

[Bix]

At this point, you'll never be able to prove or disprove any of this fully. The Sweet Georgia Brown article, which seemed to be the backbone of the anti-Moolah defense, came off as flimsy hearsay to me. And then you have her son standing in front of Moolah's house saying his sister was bitter and exaggerated or lied about what was said in the article.

It's not exactly a stretch to think she only told her daughter and not her son, though. And "she decided to frame the woman who was responsible for her mom not being home much as an abusive pimp and human trafficker" is a bit of a stretch. Meltzer also strongly implies that the Moolah told the women to sleep with promoters in the on the bio he did in 2007, too. Lady Maxine had been pretty steadfast about Moolah trying to book get for a call as a prostitute, and she's successful so far removed from wrestling that she has little reason to lie.

 

Also, the child neglect case, as reported at the time, had vaguely pimp line overtones. And Moolah's daughter did a terrible job trying to debunk it.

 

Is it a perfect case? Of course not. Is it possible that some bad reporting in the past month have made it look worse? Sure. But Nigel is doing a shitty job trying to pick it apart while accusing anyone who points out the deficiencies in his interviews of cyberbullying him with hate speech.

[Matt D]

Ive never actually read the Moolah bio. Its years before theyre going to toss that on the website.

[Ricky Jackson]

I believe the first actual physical copy of the Observer I read was the one with the Moolah bio. It was eye opening stuff for me at the time because it went into major detail on the history of women's wrestling and all the sleazy stories

[Herodes]

I hope wrestling fans are willing to take as much action against WWE working with and promoting a regime that oppresses

women and band key parts of their roster from competing as they did when a battle royal was named after a dead pimp. Have sponsors been contacted, articles written etc?

[Victator]

I had only heard of Lady Maxxine having money issues with Moolah.

I did not say people who heard something would or could do anything about it. Women's wrestling being a niche within a niche would make it more likely that people would hear something. But we have had people who have no reason to bash or defend Moolah, say they heard nothing of it. Lelani Kai who seems to outright hate Moolah, said she heard nothing of it.

It's not exactly a stretch to think she only told her daughter and not her son

 

I think it would be a stretch that her son heard nothing from either his sister or his mother. Most families can't keep big secrets from one another.

Again I have no attachment to Moolah. She was by all accounts a crook, (even by wrestling standards) and a selfish performer who never created new stars. But beyond that the case is very flimsy.

[shakla]

Maxine did say this (from http://slam.canoe.com/Slam/Wrestling/2014/08/30/21908686.html)

 

 

She recalled that Moolah did however, offer her trainees work of a different, insidious variety. "Moolah did send girls out to this guy in Arizona and pimped them out. I actually spoke to him on the phone and asked him what he was looking for. He said, 'If I'm spending all this money, you know what I want.' That was part of Moolah's way of making money. She was just a bad person. Moolah didn't have a good bone in her body."

 

Maxine didn't partake in this, clearly. Think this Arizona guy was talked about in some of the Nigel videos. He was a doctor that apparently liked to take pictures of female wrestlers, one said. Think someone also said no one was forced to fly there. It's odd, that's for sure. Really don't know what to make of it. Not saying Maxine's wrong, but that's a vague claim.

[Johnny Sorrow]

 

Vic nailed it.

[The Thread Killer]

I think what people are missing here is. If she was doing what some of those women have alleged. She wouldn't do that to everyone, that would be fucking stupid and endanger the scam.

This. If something didn't happen to everyone, it doesn't mean something didn't happen to anyone.

 

Mad Dog and Loss sum up my feelings exactly. Sweet Georgia Brown, Mad Maxine and Luna Vachon all independently made very similar accusations about Moolah. Those accusations alone, paired with what we already know for a fact about Moolah's business practices equal more than enough to justify people protesting her name being used for the Battle Royal.

 

Coming up with a list of people who knew Moolah, that claim she never exploited them, or that they never saw her exploit somebody proves absolutely nothing. It's nothing but a massive red herring which is insulting to the intelligence. I'm sure that over the years, Bill Cosby had coffee with hundreds of women that he didn't drug and rape. That doesn't somehow magically invalidate the 50 + cases where he did.

[Victator]

When this started back in March, I more or less believed the rumors about Moolah. But as a greater light shined on it, I noticed the case was a lot weaker than I had thought.

Now lets examine these claims.

Apparently Sweet Georgia Brown's own family can't decide if its true. We never hear from her directly.

The only common thread in Luna and Maxxine's stories are there is a creepy doctor in Arizona who liked to take pictures of women wrestlers.

This has been an ongoing story for over a month now and we can't get one concrete claim of Moolah being a "pimp". If anything the evidence is getting weaker.

At this point I'm more interested in why some people need the Moolah human trafficker tales to be real. The truth about Moolah is bad on its own, there is no need to exaggerate.

[Mad Dog]

It really doesn't change my opinion either way. For this thread I was merely pointing out that her treatment wouldn't be universal and some women saying it didn't happen to them means that it didn't happen. You take away that aspect and she's still a piece of shit and shouldn't have had a battle royal named after her.

[The Thread Killer]

I was merely pointing out that her treatment wouldn't be universal and some women saying it didn't happen to them means that it didn't happen. You take away that aspect and she's still a piece of shit and shouldn't have had a battle royal named after her.

 

This.

[Kadaveri]

What Meltzer said about Moolah in his 2007 bio:

"You never know truth from fiction in the story of Moolah, who, in person, was a charming Southern woman who may not have been well liked by most of the women wrestlers of the era, but garnered tremendous respect from the men in power, which was very difficult for a woman in this business to have. She was reliable to do business with. When she said you'd have four women in your territory of a certain date, they would be there, no matter what the weather conditions were. And the women were taught not to complain or cause trouble even though the hard life traveling with a troupe of wrestlers for a few weeks is going to have its inherent issues. The reputation is they would be professionals when they arrived, and the ones who weren't didn't last long. Of course, different promoters had very difficult ideas of what being a professional meant."

[Grimmas]

What Meltzer said about Moolah in his 2007 bio:

 

"You never know truth from fiction in the story of Moolah, who, in person, was a charming Southern woman who may not have been well liked by most of the women wrestlers of the era, but garnered tremendous respect from the men in power, which was very difficult for a woman in this business to have. She was reliable to do business with. When she said you'd have four women in your territory of a certain date, they would be there, no matter what the weather conditions were. And the women were taught not to complain or cause trouble even though the hard life traveling with a troupe of wrestlers for a few weeks is going to have its inherent issues. The reputation is they would be professionals when they arrived, and the ones who weren't didn't last long. Of course, different promoters had very difficult ideas of what being a professional meant."

That certainly reads awful. I wish Dave would be less vague, because I think if you read between the lines it's pretty clear, but he doesn't go right out and say it.

[C.S.]

Of course, different promoters had very difficult ideas of what being a professional meant."

 

Is this supposed to say different or difficult?

 

Probably doesn't matter, as I don't think the meaning changes much either way.