Dark Side of the Ring

[Loss]

I thought that was the whole story of Spider Lady -- that Wendi didn't know and that Moolah was put in there to doublecross her.

[Ricky Jackson]

I'm pretty sure Richter has claimed that once the match started she knew it was Moolah. I'm not sure if she then guessed a double cross was coming 

[Loss]

Well yeah, I assumed the same. She didn't know in advance, but knew in the ring of course.

[sek69]

Yeah there's no way anyone wouldn't know it was Moolah in the ring that night. The Spider Lady costume wasn't exactly flattering and there was no one else it could have been based on the body type.  What I never understood is Vince corners her before the match and demands she sign a new contract basically sight unseen, and then she gets to the ring and sees it's a different person in the Spider Lady suit and it's clearly Moolah. How does she not figure that shit's about to go down?

[El-P]

FWIW, Lady Victoria said that everyone in the building knew it was Moolah. Body shape, way of moving around. Come on now.

[The Thread Killer]

10 hours ago, El-P said:

No idea who's the goofball doing the "Fight for Moolah" stuff

I haven't seen this episode yet, but if there's somebody passionately defending Moolah, it's probably PWO's own "iamthedoctor."  Defending Moolah seemed quite important to him.

[CarpetCrawler]

5 hours ago, Charles (Loss) said:

I thought that was the whole story of Spider Lady -- that Wendi didn't know and that Moolah was put in there to doublecross her.

The plan for that MSG match before Vince went with the double cross was that Wendi or Spider Lady was going to lose by countout or DQ (I forget which but it was absolutely going to be a non-finish) and then Wendi was going to unmask Moolah and chase her to the back, so it sounds to me like Wendi is working the documentary to make it a juicier story.  She 100% knew it was Moolah, what she didn't know was that Vince and Moolah were double crossing her, and neither did Gorilla and Jesse.

[Loss]

16 hours ago, El-P said:

FWIW, Lady Victoria said that everyone in the building knew it was Moolah. Body shape, way of moving around. Come on now.

I think the case being made is that Wendi didn't know BEFORE the match. Of course she knew during the match.

[CarpetCrawler]

And she knew before as well as during, which makes the whole thing moot.  I think she was trying to make it a juicier story than it really was.

I think the most telling thing about how last minute the screwjob was was the reaction of Gorilla and Jesse, who clearly had no clue beforehand what was going to happen.  Two guys' whose entire commentary schtick (especially in the case of Jesse) is that they are smarter than the room would absolutely not sell that level of confusion.

[sek69]

Gorilla especially seemed to think it was a ref screw up since Wendi's shoulder was up barely at the 2 count but he kept going.  It was funny to hear them clearly not know what was going on and either figure it out gradually or most likely someone told them over the headset.

[CarpetCrawler]

Kind of reminds me of the David Sammartino-Ron Shaw phantom submission from the Spectrum that happened around the same time where Gorilla spent a lot of the next match bitching out the ref for ending the match early when it was all on Sammartino for quitting two minutes in.

[BruiserBrody]

One thing that surprised me while doing my deep drives month by month is how little Richter worked after getting the Lauper rub.  A Richter match against lady worker A,B,C, seems like it would have been an easy special attraction for a company running a gazillion shows a month.  I think it got as low as like 2 shots during one month. I wonder if Moolah convinced Vince to pull back the push even months before the "screw job"? 

[sek69]

I'd be willing to bet that Moolah was worried if Wendi got hot (as in mainstream MTV in the 80s hot, not just rasslin' hot) she'd lose her place as the supreme dictator of all women's wrestling.  At the same time, Wendi seems like the type where getting the push she already was getting probably made her think she didn't have to listen to that old bat call the shots anymore now that she was rubbing elbows with real entertainment stars.

It really is one of those situations where looking back at the people involved it makes you think "well of course ended up that way, how else could it have?"

[CarpetCrawler]

15 hours ago, BruiserBrody said:

One thing that surprised me while doing my deep drives month by month is how little Richter worked after getting the Lauper rub.  A Richter match against lady worker A,B,C, seems like it would have been an easy special attraction for a company running a gazillion shows a month.  I think it got as low as like 2 shots during one month. I wonder if Moolah convinced Vince to pull back the push even months before the "screw job"? 

She would take 1-2 months off at a time and then was on the house show circuit in the C/B team shows typically, first with Kai, then Moolah (because Mad Maxine quit), then back with Kai, and then with Spider Lady.  And yeah she wasn't used anywhere near as much on TV as I think most people realize which took me off-guard as well.

The most interesting thing to me about Richter's post-WM run is the match in Puerto Rico against Spider Lady where they even get Cyndi Lauper to show up.  This was many months after WrestleMania, and Lauper was already phased out of WWF stuff heavily at that point.

[Al]

Given that at one point Richter was married to Hugo Savinovich, maybe there was some backstory there.

[sek69]

The Moolah episode was interesting. They never really denied that the stories were true, the only defenders were her daughter (and where was any mention of the story about her bringing neglect charges against her mother?), Bambi who came off like a uber mark just happy to be in the business, and the Fight For Moolah guy who was like the personification of every creepy women's wrestling fan on the internet. 

It was also telling seeing Victoria tell a story about Moolah trying to pimp her out, then ending the show by saying "you better not call her a pimp because that makes me a prostitute". It showed to me that there's basically two camps: people who Moolah didn't prey on and therefore assume all the allegations are lies,  and those it did happen to who either are honest about who Moolah was or are in denial because otherwise it would mean having to admit they got pimped out.

Her legacy is an interesting thing too. She clearly kept women's wrestling running when it probably wouldn't have otherwise, and should deserve credit for that. She honestly probably wasn't any better or worse than any other wrestling promoter of the time, it's just more scandalous because it was a woman doing sleazy pro wrestling promoter shit. On the other hand, she definitely outstayed her welcome, and her 80s run as a serious threat rather than the old legend passing the torch is pretty embarrassing to watch. Even if Vince wanted to show uppity broad Wendi who's boss for wanting to get paid, putting the title back on Moolah more or less killed women's wrestling on a major league level as anything serious until the recent "revolution", save a couple years in the 90s when Madusa was there.  

[C.S.]

If anything, I think the documentary skewed in favor of Moolah. Yes, she still came across as an asshole, but the only people calling her a pimp were the family of Sweet Georgia Brown. Even Princess Victoria said at the end that Moolah never pimped her out, despite describing a scenario earlier in the documentary that would imply the exact opposite. Very strange.

Wendy Richter acting like she had no idea Moolah was Spider-Lady seems to fly in the face of all logic, so either she's telling tall tales or her comments were edited a certain way to add drama.

I'm in the minority in that I thought Bambi and the daughter came across fine, if perhaps a bit too naive. Bambi admitting she was never a star in wrestling, while not making the connection that Moolah holding her back might've been the reason why, made her seem a bit too trusting to me - a rarity in the wrestling business, I would imagine.

The Moolah fan was a big WTF inclusion. Who the hell is this weirdo, and why should we care?

On a purely business level, you could argue that Moolah should have stepped aside far sooner, but you could also make the case that ladies' wrestling stuck around because she housed, trained, and booked so many women. You could also defend Moolah by pointing that that she had be ruthless as "a woman in a man's world." Plus, regardless of what Moolah has or hasn't done, she still was 1/2 of that equation with Wendi Richter at the age of 60, which is impressive for such a cosmetic industry. As always, the truth is complicated - she could've still made positive contributions to wrestling while also being an asshole or worse. (Of course, there is no defending the pimping allegations, if true.)

One thing I will agree with is that a lot of this should have come out when she was alive. Perhaps some of it did, and that's just a false talking point her defenders use? I don't know. But it is true that most of this didn't really come to the forefront until after her death. Maybe this has been detailed in the Observer over the years? But that isn't the same as mainstream publicity.

 

[Al]

Moolah hate was around when she was alive. Check out the documentary Lipstick and Dynamite. It seemed like professional animosity though. Moolah was a spotlight hog, she dominated the scene. She garnished her trainees wages and collected high booking fees, etc. I honestly thought more women would speak out against her when she and especially Mae Young passed away, which never really happened.

The sexual accusations I'm wary of because they're second hand. It's always "Moolah pimped out the girls," never "Moolah pimped me out." It absolutely could have happened, but I don't want to levy a label like that without substantial evidence.

I think there are things Moolah is absolutely unfairly criticized for. She trained girls in a safe style which certainly wasn't as exciting as the Japanese girls, but knowing what we know about concussions I'm not going to criticize it by any means. She's accused of holding back womens wrestling but I don't think any US promoter was willing to push womens wrestling. Vince McMahon Jr. featured more womens wrestling than anyone else at the time, and that's freaking Vince. What happened with womens wrestling after the late 40s and early 50s mirrors society at large and women in other sports. I don't think anyone could have taken it further than a sideshow, and a national exhibition tour in the territorial era was probably the best result.

[El-P]

10 minutes ago, Al said:

She trained girls in a safe style which certainly wasn't as exciting as the Japanese girls, but knowing what we know about concussions I'm not going to criticize it by any means. 

Hum... Apart from Plum Mariko, I don't know of one japanese female worker who ended up bad working their style, so that's really not a valid argument. Plus, Victoria talking about how Moolah had her take bumps day in day out after she broke her neck really tells you all you need to know about how she "cared" about her talent. Moolah was a shit worker and she taught her students her shitty style because that's all she knew, and that made women's wrestling look like a shitty side-show for ever instead of having a chance to evolve. 

I do think Luna used the "Moolah pimped me" line. But anyway, I thought the doc was way skewed in favor to Moolah in the end. She was, from all account, a terrible person (and a shit worker).

[Migs]

It always strikes me in these conversations about Moolah, discussing individuals' experiences, that the likeliest scenario is never suggested - that Moolah treated different women differently based on what she could do for them. Leilani Kai and Judy Martin say she didn't pimp them; well, those were her best workers. The story Princess Victoria tells involves her being pimped when she couldn't work. In other words, Moolah used people for what she needed from them, and just because something bad didn't happen to one person is not an argument it didn't happen to others.

[El-P]

4 minutes ago, Migs said:

In other words, Moolah used people for what she needed from them, and just because something bad didn't happen to one person is not an argument it didn't happen to others.

Yeah, that what is bothering about the Moolah defense. Even if she had only pimped very few girls very few times, well, that would still makes her a piece of shit (like her husband, BTW).

[C.S.]

3 hours ago, El-P said:

(like her husband, BTW).

Aren't there rumors that Moolah was a lesbian? (Not that it matters either way. But I think I have heard that about her or at least Mae Young.)

[Al]

31 minutes ago, C.S. said:

Aren't there rumors that Moolah was a lesbian? (Not that it matters either way. But I think I have heard that about her or at least Mae Young.)

I would be a little surprised if she wasn't. But she was indeed married twice, once to wrestler turned promoter Buddy Lee and again to wrestler Johnny Long.

[C.S.]

The Wrestlers: Season 1 (VICELAND's next documentary) - 99 cents

https://smile.amazon.com/THE-WRESTLERS-Season-1/dp/B07RYWX39R/

As always with Amazon, this price may last only a few hours or it may last a week - who knows. If you're even remotely interested, get it now IMO. Episodes will be added the day after they air.

Dark Side of the Ring, as hit-or-miss as it was at times, was certainly worth 99 cents (and then some).

[C.S.]

Interesting article about a non-Moolah women's wrestler who seems to have had a very long and successful career.

http://slam.canoe.com/Slam/Wrestling/GuestColumn/2019/05/08/22797484.html

Beverly "The Hammer" Shade probably wasn't famous, but then again, Moolah wouldn't have been either if not for the '80s and '90s WWF comebacks.