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00:00Now I understand you had a rough match last night, you wrestled a lady, she got 14 stitches.
00:05Yeah, well, if that's what it takes to try to win, that's what I'll do.
00:09You can't say women's wrestling without thinking the fabulous Moolah.
00:13If she had not run the women's wrestling business, there may not have been women's wrestling.
00:18Introducing first to my right, former world's women's champion, the fabulous Moolah!
00:26As Moolah the promoter, I want to make money for my talent, and I want to make money for Moolah.
00:36Even to this day, if you say women's wrestling, the picture of Moolah appears in my mind.
00:45If Moolah was alive today, I'd probably slap her.
00:50She was so jealous of any woman that was younger than her in wrestling.
00:57She was also a manipulator, and she was also a thief.
01:00She wanted to hurt me, bruise me.
01:07There was drugs, there was sex, there was a lot of abuse with Moolah.
01:13I'm like, wow, they waited until she passed away to say all these things so she couldn't stand up and defend herself.
01:20I was warned, but I wanted to wrestle so bad.
01:23She gave her whole life to professional wrestling.
01:27She gave all these girls an opportunity, and for nobody to stand up for.
01:33I don't know, just couldn't deal with it.
01:36She was a great professional wrestler, but she didn't know when to stop.
01:43On this episode, the life, legend, and controversy of the Fabulous Moolah.
01:50And it's Fabulous Moolah, with a WWF women's title on the line here.
02:02She made all of her costumes herself.
02:05Anything flashy she loved.
02:07She was just that kind of person.
02:10It really never impressed me that much, because to me she was just my mother,
02:15and I didn't really realize how popular she was.
02:18My name is Mary Austin, and I'm the only child of the Fabulous Moolah.
02:25My mother kind of kept me out of the spotlight.
02:28But she loved the spotlight.
02:31She was determined to do it.
02:33When you really love something, you put yourself into it,
02:36and she had all of herself into it.
02:38This is one Mary let me have.
02:41As you can see how beautiful it is, sparkly just like Moolah liked it.
02:45Oh, yeah.
02:46My name is Selena Majors.
02:49I wrestled as Bambi.
02:51Started in 1986, so I've been in it for 32 years.
02:54I wanted my name as a kid to be Dynamite Dixie Majors.
02:58So I've got these big posters that would say,
03:00The Fabulous Moolah Champion versus Dynamite Dixie Majors.
03:04I had this life-size doll, and I'd take that doll and I would body slam it and climb up on the bed and drop an elbow.
03:13I'd stand in front of the mirror with my hairbrush, do little interviews and tell Moolah how I was going to come and wrestle her.
03:19As you can tell, I like the bad guys, the heels.
03:24She was a heel. She played that part.
03:26My name is The Fabulous Moolah. I've been wrestling since I was 15 years old, and I am the world's champion lady wrestler.
03:32They hated her, but that's what she wanted.
03:35She's nasty!
03:37That's your cheek!
03:39Oh, I'd fix up a little spoon handle, you know, about the size of your finger, roll it up with tape and put it down in my bra.
03:47The meaner she was, the more they liked it, you know, and she loved being a heel.
03:52Stick it in the eyes and the throat.
03:56The Fabulous Moolah started as a female wrestler, and then she became the female wrestling champion, and then she became the booker of all the girl wrestlers.
04:04I first broke into wrestling as a photographer.
04:06I was a 15-year-old kid, and I was doing all of the photography that was sold in the arenas for the entire Memphis wrestling territory.
04:12Moolah, can I get a couple of pictures for the magazines? Always say for the magazines, right?
04:16Well, of course you can, darling. And she had her stock poses, boom, boom, boom, in 30 seconds, and she's off to the ring.
04:22Moolah pioneered the hair-pullin', cat-fightin', scratchin', crowd-pleasing kind of women's wrestling.
04:31She broke glass ceilings one after another. She got into wrestling when there was no women in wrestling.
04:39Women's wrestling was actually banned in Madison Square Garden, and Moolah was the one that was chosen to break the band.
04:46She was the featured girl in the first girls' match in the garden.
04:50Now that she's almost 60, she's on MTV.
04:54It's 1984, the rock and wrestling connection, Cindy Lauper, and that whole era of network TV, and Madison Square Garden, and MTV, and rock and roll stars.
05:05And this place is ready to explode tonight.
05:08Got so much national attention that NBC and everybody else started looking at pro wrestling.
05:14She made it from the mid-50s to the dawn of MTV for the biggest payoff she ever made.
05:20There she is, the fabulous one, the fabulous Moolah, putting her title on the line.
05:26There'll never be anyone to have the guts that she had.
05:32This must have been really old.
05:35Look at that, look at her hair.
05:37This is a wrestling license.
05:39Her mom passed away when she was about nine, I think.
05:42And then it was her dad and her brothers that raised her.
05:45So she learned how to fight real early.
05:48It was rough for her.
05:50I was an only child, and she was just a teenager.
05:53She went to wrestling matches every week.
05:56And my mother saw Mildred Burke, and she said, that's what I want to be.
06:00It's Mildred Burke of Los Angeles, California, world champion.
06:05Back in the 30s and 40s, Mildred Burke was such a legitimate athlete.
06:09She was in tremendous shape, and she just had a natural flair for wrestling.
06:13But behind the scenes, Billy Wolf, Mildred Burke's husband, was pulling the strings
06:17and managed the whole women's troupe for good and bad.
06:21When she was 17 or 18, she went to see Billy Wolf.
06:24When you became a wrestler for Billy Wolf, you automatically had to go to bed with him.
06:30She said she wasn't doing it.
06:32She could find some other way to wrestle without having to go to bed with him or anyone else.
06:37What's the worst experience you might want to say that you ever had with a promoter?
06:42That's kind of hard to talk about. It really is.
06:45The fabulous moolah, at one point, was married to a guy named Buddy Lee.
06:50Buddy Lee used to wrestle. Of course, they met, and they sort of fell for each other.
06:55And she did most of the wrestling, and he did most of the booking.
06:59She basically copied the Mildred Burke and Billy Wolf playbook.
07:04They kept their own stable. They took all the bookings, and more importantly,
07:08a booking fee out of all of the girls' pay.
07:11You knew right off the bat why she got into business and why she wanted to be a star.
07:16She loved money.
07:18Moolah would play such a dominant role in women's wrestling that in 2018, 11 years after her death, her memory still loomed over the sport.
07:31The WWE made the announcement on March the 12th that they were going to honor the Fabulous Moolah by having the Fabulous Moolah Memorial Battle Royal.
07:38I thought it was very nice that they would name it after her, keeping her legacy going.
07:43Two or three days later, that had all been taken away.
07:47Let's talk about the Fabulous Moolah controversy.
07:50I think it's a bunch of bull. I really think it's a bunch of bull.
07:53Moolah has an awful past.
07:55Some really, really sick shit.
07:57She was an evil person.
07:59Moolah was pimping girls out.
08:01A lot of the stuff is alleged. We gotta say that. It's alleged.
08:04Grossed out about it. Name it something else. It's not hard. Scrap it.
08:08The story started coming out on the internet.
08:13Fabulous Moolah suddenly was a horrible person who took advantage of all these women and pimped them out and fed them drugs and all this stuff.
08:21They contacted the sponsors and they had to take her name off.
08:25I was very shocked because I knew better. I knew none of that was true.
08:30And thanks to Nigel, he took the lead way on it.
08:34My name is Nigel Sherrod. I'm mostly known as a wrestling host.
08:38The Fight for Moolah campaign came about because we started a petition to put the truth out there and to honor the woman who broke down the walls for everybody else.
08:50I just wanted to clear a name because Moolah's not here to defend herself.
08:55Did Moolah indeed take advantage of the girls? Some of the girls have said yes. Some of the girls have said no.
09:01I think that it was ignorant canceling the fabulous Moolah Memorial Battle Royal because I interviewed over 20 women and they all said the same thing.
09:12There's no truth to those rumors.
09:14Accusations about Moolah polarized the wrestling world. They originated from an investigative newspaper story that quoted serious allegations by the family of one of her former wrestlers.
09:27St. Mark, if you see these guys moving around, they are a professional film company.
09:34And they are doing an episode dealing with pro women wrestlers, which one of them was my mother.
09:42South Carolina first black female professional wrestler, Sweet Georgia Brown.
09:48I'm Michael McCoy. I'm a senior pastor at St. Mark Baptist Church.
09:57That article that came out in the Columbia Free Times, it was about what my mother had to go through and endure while she was in wrestling.
10:05I started a search to try to find out the truth.
10:08Maybe you could just tell us your name and a little bit about yourself.
10:11Yes, my name is Barbara Harsey and I am the proud daughter of Susan May McCoy.
10:17Who is also known as?
10:19Sweet Georgia Brown.
10:21When my mom went into wrestling, she was with the so-called Great Moolah.
10:30She said she was forced to do a lot of things against her will.
10:36Now, these are just stories that I heard. Do I know any truth to them?
10:41No, I can't sit here and say I know truth to it. I'm not.
10:45But, you know, when more than one, two, three people saying the same story, you know, somebody ain't lying.
10:53Philip, honey, can you walk these guys outside and show them the banister?
11:06This is my husband, Philip.
11:07How y'all doing?
11:08How we doing?
11:09Yeah, sure, sure.
11:14Back to your hands.
11:15Oh, wow.
11:16Back when Moolah died, my husband, he went over to tear down the barn.
11:22That the ring was in.
11:24And he found the banister, the women's wrestlers.
11:28And he brought it back.
11:29Thought I would want to, you know, keep it.
11:33For the better part of 25 years, every top girl wrestler was trained by Moolah, booked out by Moolah, and was controlled by Moolah's group.
11:41Can you tell us who Sweet Georgia Brown was?
11:44Yeah, she was one of the first African-American women to wrestle.
11:49And my mother trained her.
11:51Believe it or not, it was on a mattress in the living room.
11:56It was unreal.
11:58But they learned a lot.
11:59I was told she had that drive to go get it.
12:02You know, it's like she had a purpose.
12:04She wanted to be there.
12:06The first time I seen a wrestler, the place was jam-packed, throwing each other out the ring.
12:12They're kicking, body slamming.
12:15I just figured, you know, this is one tough lady.
12:19Being one of the first black females to get into the wrestling business, the KKKs was at their fullest.
12:27The segregation was really bad at that time.
12:30Whenever they were on the road, my mother was very protective.
12:34There was a time in Mississippi she did have a run-in with some KKKs.
12:39She was thrown on the floor of the bars, and she was scared for her life.
12:45She had to have been super passionate because, see, in 1964, she was ranked number four in the world.
12:54If she would have had the opportunity to fight for the world's title, she probably would have won it.
13:00But Moolah was most definitely not going to let a student challenge her for the world's title.
13:06When my mom went into wrestling, she left us with one of her sisters.
13:14She would call us names half-breeds.
13:17She was a witch.
13:19God forgive me.
13:21She's dead and gone.
13:23Every time my mother went on the road and she'd come back, just about, she was pregnant.
13:28One of my aunts said that every time you come back home, you come back home with one of these half-white kids, half-breeds.
13:34And we got mistreated, you know, for years growing up because of our color.
13:39I hated where she had left us.
13:43I hated her career.
13:45But then when I got the full story from her, I kind of understood.
13:52There's a lot of abuse with Moolah and Buddy Lee.
13:59I saw her one time.
14:01This big old car had pulled up.
14:03She was getting out of the back of the car.
14:06And it was only for a few hours.
14:09I didn't know the man's name at the time, but he thought it was time to go.
14:16My sister and I, we grabbed hold to her leg, but he kind of, like, pushed her.
14:22And she hit her head getting into the car.
14:25I don't know if it was intentionally or it was an accident.
14:29My mom said everywhere she went and everything she did was done, according to Buddy Lee and Moolah.
14:39I think she thought that it was going to be glamorous and glory, but it turned out to be something totally different.
14:46I heard different stories about my mother.
14:51It's real sad.
14:53And I have no reason not to believe that I count.
14:57There was one gruesome time that we talked about.
15:01She was told to drink and pot pills.
15:07She was made to have sex with other men.
15:14On the road, some of the promoters wouldn't pay some of the girls until they slept with other promoters.
15:20From what my mother told me, she was their favorite.
15:26And you can call it entertaining or whatever.
15:31It's still pimping in prostitution.
15:35Buddy Lee was not a nice person.
15:38And my mother was on the road.
15:40And she came home a day early and caught him in her bed.
15:43It was one of the girls that she trained.
15:45And she threw Buddy out.
15:47That was it.
15:48A lot of the girls went with him.
15:50Georgia Brown was one of the girls that went with Buddy.
15:53I started to search for my father.
15:55And then one of the first places where I started was with the Fabulous Moolah.
15:59Honestly, I was almost kind of afraid a little bit.
16:02Because I heard of the Moolah that everybody else talked about.
16:06But the Moolah that I met, she seemed to be a fine lady.
16:11I asked Moolah, did my mother ever talk about who my father was?
16:15Then Moolah took me to her wall.
16:17And she pointed out this one picture.
16:19And I said, who is this guy right here in the middle?
16:23She said, well, his name is Buddy Lee.
16:26He was kind of rough on the girls.
16:29I think that happened with sweet Georgia Brown.
16:32That she was one that had to go to bed with Buddy.
16:35And as a matter of fact, I think the son, Michael, is proof of that.
16:40If Buddy Lee's my father, then that's who he is.
16:43I wasn't coming in to look for anything.
16:45And I didn't want anything.
16:47I just wanted to close a chapter in my life.
16:52I knew that everything was over when my uncle burned up all of her stuff.
17:00And he poured gas on it.
17:02And he set it on fire.
17:05Right there in front of us.
17:08At the end, she kind of thanked them because of the things that she had to endure.
17:14The things that she was made to do by Moolah, by Buddy Lee, by the industry itself.
17:23Listening to your mom describe some of the most horrific things she had to do.
17:30You can't just walk away.
17:32Regardless of the abuse she went through.
17:35Regardless of if they made her use drugs.
17:38They made her use alcohol.
17:40Rather, they pimped her.
17:41She still was South Carolina's first black female professional wrestler.
17:46Honor it.
17:50Sweet Georgia Brown's life was shaped by forces beyond her control.
17:55For Moolah to succeed, she would need to build her own women's wrestling empire.
18:01The fabulous Moolah single-handedly built her women's training school into a powerhouse that dominated the industry.
18:12It attracted young women eager to follow in her footsteps.
18:16In Columbia, South Carolina, there was a location called Moolah Drive.
18:20And on Moolah Drive was the house that Moolah built.
18:24And also a variety of other buildings.
18:26It was a compound.
18:28The women not only trained there, but they lived on the property.
18:31And Moolah presided over it like a mother lion.
18:35She took girls from all walks of life.
18:38And she brought them in.
18:40She taught them a skill.
18:42She put it together like a group or a union.
18:45And took care of the girls.
18:47And made sure they were taken care of.
18:49She was one of the most powerful women in the wrestling business.
18:53If you were a female wrestler at that point and you wanted to get booked, you pretty much had to go through Moolah or you weren't going to work.
19:00I have a bunch of questions.
19:04Okay.
19:05I took my truth serum before I came in.
19:08Okay.
19:09My name is Wendy Richter.
19:11Wendy Richter!
19:13I was a professional wrestler for over 20 years.
19:16The first time I ever watched a wrestling match, I watched the fabulous Moolah versus Vivian St. John.
19:24And I told my friend I could beat Moolah.
19:28The referee gave me Moolah's phone number.
19:32She told me to come on to Columbia, South Carolina.
19:35I was there within two weeks.
19:37My name is Victoria Otis.
19:39I wrestled as Princess Victoria.
19:45I come from a very, very abusive childhood.
19:49And that's basically what took me to wrestling.
19:52You had to want it.
19:54You had to bleed.
19:55You had to cry.
19:56When I was wrestling, and it had been about a year, and I was told by my promoter,
20:02Look, I've done all I can do.
20:04I've tried to get you booked other places.
20:06The only way I can get you booked is I got to send you to Moolah.
20:09I still remember a friend of mine telling me, Vicki, he said, don't go to Moolah's.
20:14Find a job.
20:16Get on your feet.
20:17Just don't go to Moolah's.
20:19I was warned.
20:20But I wanted to wrestle so bad.
20:23When you first got to the property, there's these big gates.
20:30After dark, the gates were locked.
20:33If you weren't home, and you weren't working, you got locked out.
20:37Moolah had a roommate named Diamond Lil, and we all called her Katie.
20:44And I really like Katie.
20:46My name is Diamond Lil, and Buddy Lee named me Diamond Lil.
20:52Katie come from a hard background, too.
20:54She was a wrestler, and she lived in the house with Moolah.
20:57And she called her Ma.
20:59And she's been right there with my mother through thick and thin.
21:02Katie liked to drink beer, but she wasn't allowed to.
21:08Katie used to come out to the pond and go fishing, and I'd come in there and drop a six-pack in the pond, and her and I'd sit there and drink beer.
21:16I was famous for getting the beer on the property.
21:19They had apartments, and she would put two or three girls in there at a time, and they would come down to the gym every morning.
21:29What I remember the most about my training at Moolah's was learning to drop kick.
21:38I would go out there and drop kick and drop kick and drop kick and just land on the mat.
21:45The mat wasn't soft.
21:46It was all bloody, and by that time, a lot of it was mine.
21:50There were buckets strategically placed, and it wasn't if you were going to throw up.
21:57It was when you were going to throw up, and would you hit the bucket.
22:01The one thing that Moolah taught me, take a bite and growl.
22:10Moolah, she never trained me.
22:12She just took the money, and she had the girls train me.
22:18She wanted her $300.
22:20Now, can you imagine four girls in one little house?
22:24She's getting $1,200 a month in the 80s?
22:30And on top of that, she's taking 25% off of what she's telling us were paid.
22:37Bullpucky.
22:38I'm sitting here 24 hours a day, making you connections with the promoters.
22:43All you got to do is set your lazy butt in the car and go to wrestle and collect their money and send me 25%.
22:51And I thought that was fair.
22:54There is a picture of me in this brown outfit that Moolah presented to me at Christmas in front of all the girls after she had given all of them a $5 or $10 gift.
23:10That was no cheap outfit.
23:13That was hand-beaded.
23:14That was a $200 to $300 outfit.
23:16She couldn't take me in privately and give me this outfit.
23:20She had to do it in front of the girls.
23:21That was another one of her little manipulation things.
23:26Everything brings back memories now.
23:28And it's like the floodgates get opened.
23:33I was in a match.
23:34I know it was the first or second week in September 1984.
23:38A girl...
23:41Shut up!
23:50The night I broke my neck in the ring, a girl stumbled and she sat on my head.
23:59That was the day my world fell apart.
24:05It hurt so bad I couldn't stand it.
24:07I remember a moment at the hospital.
24:10They had my neck braced.
24:12I remember being on a cot.
24:15Then the next thing I remember, I don't know how, but I'm back at Moolah's property.
24:21And Moolah's walking me out to the ring.
24:23She said, I want to see if you can take a bump.
24:25I took a bump and I cried.
24:28Every time I took a bump, I felt like something was exploding.
24:33This went on for a month, two months.
24:36Moolah comes to me one day.
24:38She said, hon, if you go see this guy in Holland, he'll give you a payday.
24:43I thought to myself, I can't wrestle, might as well.
24:45I get on the phone with this guy and I make it explicitly clear.
24:51It's separate motel rooms.
24:54The conversation after I hung up with him with Moolah was, you know, hon, the nicer you are to him, the bigger your payday will be.
25:03And you could really use a payday.
25:06And so was Moolah sort of insinuating like the idea that...
25:09When Moolah looked at me and said, you know, the nicer you are to him, the nicer he'll be to you.
25:19What else can I say?
25:22When this guy first picked me up at the airport, I said, damn, this guy didn't get beat by the ugly stick.
25:27He got beat by the whole damn forest.
25:29I wake up the next morning, I catch him right here and I grab his hand and I'm holding it.
25:37I said, dude, I will break your wrist.
25:42And she was fire engine red pissed when I got back.
25:48I can't believe she didn't sleep with him.
25:51Well, not a week after I got back is when Moo came to me and said, look, you can't wrestle and I need my rent.
25:57I'll take that yellow outfit.
25:59I'll take the brown outfit that she gave me for Christmas.
26:02I left the property that day with my Chevy Malibu station wagon and 20 bucks in my pocket.
26:09She dumped me.
26:11And I never wrestled again.
26:12And I walked away 30 years ago.
26:17My heart was broke.
26:21I can't even explain it.
26:23I miss the road.
26:25I miss my friends.
26:26I miss my family.
26:27And when I left, do you know what Moo told the girls?
26:32She told them I was in prison for dealing cocaine.
26:36For God's sake, she couldn't tell them that I broke my neck and I was of no use to her anymore.
26:42So I had to go because then they knew their fate.
26:45I love wrestling to protect this business to me is like protecting the country.
26:59If wrestling needed me, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
27:03All someone has to do is ask.
27:06Moolah!
27:08As wrestling gained popularity in the early 1980s, the WWF looked to replenish its roster with younger wrestlers.
27:16Moolah's protege, Wendy Richter, was an obvious choice.
27:23Wendy Richter.
27:25Hell of a person.
27:27Hell of a lady.
27:29She loved her business.
27:31She honed her skills.
27:32She worked very hard to become the wrestler she was.
27:37Do you have an assumption as to why there was so much friction between you and Moolah?
27:42The only thing I can think of why there was so much friction is possibly she was jealous of me because I was younger than her.
27:49And like my father said, they couldn't put her face on a can of dog food to sell it.
27:55Wendy Richter began to eclipse her mentor and she left Moolah's stable to join Vince McMahon.
28:02When I left Moolah's, I had a conversation with Vince McMahon and told him that I didn't want to live there anymore.
28:09And I did not want my check going to her.
28:13I wanted the check to come to me.
28:16So I knew what I was making.
28:18As soon as Vince took over from his father, he started making changes.
28:24One advantage that he had was that a lot of celebrities had grown up in the New York area as fans of wrestling and one of those was Cindy Lauper.
28:34Cindy Lauper was on an airplane flight with Lou Albano and then Lou Albano tells everyone that he was managing Cindy Lauper.
28:49I created and made Cindy Lauper cook up from the nothing.
28:54I don't know if anybody knows it, but when she did Girls Just Want to Have Fun, he was in it.
29:00That's how all of this came together.
29:02It all boiled down to that Lou Albano said I'm going to choose someone to represent me in the ring.
29:08So Lou Albano chose Fabulous Moolah and Cindy Lauper chose me.
29:16Moolah may have the world's championship belt, but she also has Lou Albano on her side.
29:21As soon as Cindy Lauper got involved with Lou Albano, Vince McMahon saw gold and fostered that connection into the rock and wrestling connection.
29:31The rest was giving their hand at it. They have been involved with rock and roll in the past year.
29:39It brought the dated look of wrestling into the mainstream.
29:43Wendy Richter morphed from the Dallas Cowgirl to Wendy Richter a little bit more Cindy Lauperish, a little more rock and roll.
29:50And that's what led the MTV movement there in 1984 that pretty much paved the way for the first WrestleMania.
29:56They were giving girls more of a push than they probably ever had before.
29:59They were really trying to escalate the girls up, trying to get equal to the men.
30:06It was a turning point for women's wrestling.
30:09Vince wanted to make Wendy Richter the equivalent as Hulk Hogan would be, so he had a male role model and a female role model.
30:16Since the most widely recognized female champion of the previous 30 years had been the Fabulous Moolah,
30:21Wendy needed to beat Moolah for the title.
30:22Well, with that in mind, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce to you the number one contender for the ladies championship, Miss Wendy Richter.
30:30And the rest is history.
30:32Ladies and gentlemen, this title belt will be on the line at Madison Square Garden just moments from now, this lady to the band.
30:39The rivalry was about to explode in what will become one of the most watched matches of all time.
30:47That was probably the most nervous I've ever been in my life. I knew every move mattered. There was so much at stake and it was against Moolah. It was the culmination of my whole career.
31:00Moolah had been very jealous and guarded of that championship for a long time, but Vince was able to write the appropriate amount of money on a check and that changed Moolah's mind. And also, by doing that, Moolah got Vince McMahon Jr.'s loyalty for life.
31:17That's when everything changed.
31:24When I won the championship, it was a feeling like no other. Everyone was up on their feet and screaming.
31:41I can't believe someone beat her after 28 years and that someone was me.
31:52It was a big deal for the fans because they wanted to see Wendy win, right? But it was a bigger deal inside the business because two generations of wrestlers had come and gone without ever seeing the fabulous Moolah lose.
32:03It was shocking to the folks in the business who knew about the stranglehold that Moolah had had on the thing.
32:10Right here is the new champ, the terrific symbol of the new woman.
32:14My match against Moolah for the championship was kind of ground zero for women's wrestling.
32:20And it moved towards a different level of women's wrestling.
32:24See, what a lot of people don't understand is once you step in that ring, you're addicted.
32:33I think Moolah let her ego get in her way and Moolah couldn't quit.
32:40Cindy Lauper!
32:50Cindy Lauper!
32:52Oh my, we were on the top of a skyscraper.
32:56I remember I was hot, I was hungry, I was thirsty, and it felt like the day would never end.
33:03When I went to visit my father and my grandmother in Kokomo, Indiana, people recognized me.
33:11I'm thinking, they know me in Kokomo.
33:14Even though Wendy was a household name, Wendy wasn't getting paid like a household name, though.
33:19I found out early in my career that the men were being paid far more than the women.
33:26But if I'm the only one saying that, one person can be replaced.
33:30Vince McMahon had been pushing Wendy Richter, gonna make her a superstar.
33:36She possibly was getting too big for her britches.
33:39He decided that she needed to lose the belt, and who's gonna beat her for the belt?
33:44I was on the road constantly, but it was always matches against Moolah over and over.
33:51I'll never forget one time she got me in a move, the Boston Crab.
33:56With that, you never go all the way back, because you could break someone's back.
34:01Well, she did.
34:03She tried to break my back.
34:05She wanted to put me out.
34:07My spine snapped like firecrackers.
34:11She was just so bitter.
34:12I really believe in the golden rule, treat others as you'd like to be treated, but sometimes you gotta treat fire with fire.
34:20And in the ring, when that bell rang, you had no friends.
34:24When I was to wrestle the Spider Lady for a championship match, it changed my career.
34:33It changed my life.
34:35I really didn't think anything of it, so I thought, well, it's just another championship match, and it's against the Spider Lady.
34:44Wendy said that Moolah had showed up, but she didn't understand why Moolah was there.
34:54I'd wrestled the Spider Lady before, and I didn't recall her being that size.
35:00A very determined young lady, gonna take one heck of a wrestler to be able to strip that title from her.
35:07The match really didn't go that good.
35:14It was just a wrestling hole.
35:17Spider going, oh, small package!
35:20The referee counted one, I kicked out, had my shoulder up, two, three.
35:26And that was it.
35:33What was that?
35:35Appears that the referee has made its recount.
35:38The match was over.
35:42Then the masked person took their mask off, and it was Moolah.
35:51It is Moolah!
35:52It is Moolah! Take a look, Chase!
35:56Fabulous Moolah, the oldest, saltiest dog in the yard, knows all the tricks.
36:00She was the one that was chosen because it was thought that if things did break down, that she can handle Wendy legitimately anyway.
36:07Did you have any idea that that was Moolah?
36:11No.
36:12I couldn't tell who it was.
36:17It was obvious who was under that mask.
36:20Everybody in the arena knew who was under that mask.
36:23Wendy knew.
36:25This double-cross blurred the lines between business and storyline.
36:29Whatever the truth was, Wendy came out the loser.
36:32I demanded to talk to Vince McMahon, and no one would tell me where he was.
36:39I probably would have killed him with my bare hands.
36:43What Vinny and Moo did to her, Wendy was over like a million dollars at that time.
36:48Her and Cyndi Lauper, and the cartoon, the Goonies.
36:55You know, Wendy was over as big as Hogan, and maybe that was the problem.
36:59The only thing I can think of is I was asking to be paid fairly.
37:06I feel like it was a sad situation that happened because the girls should be paid maybe more than they were at the time.
37:16But when a promoter tells you who's going to win or lose, you have to go with the one who's running the show, whether you like it or not.
37:25That was her choice to walk away from it.
37:26If everything had worked with Wendy, there would have been an established women's division with women featured in more important matches a lot before it actually happened.
37:40I was angry for what she just did to women's wrestling.
37:44For so long she held it back, she held it back, she held it back, then finally it started to bloom, and she killed it.
37:52I think Moolah was afraid. I think she was afraid of walking away.
37:58I left out of the arena fully dressed in my wrestling suit, hailed a cab in New York City, and went to the airport. They were dead in my life. They were dead.
38:16Have you ever seen the footage of the match?
38:18I almost did. I couldn't bear to see it. What good would it do? The bitch is dead, okay? I don't need to see it. I was there.
38:28I was there.
38:37In 1995, the fabulous Moolah became the first woman inducted into the WWF Wrestling Hall of Fame.
38:45Tonight is the greatest night of my life, being inducted into the WWF Hall of Fame.
38:53By the year 2000, the WWF had phased out traditional women's athletic wrestling in favor of strip matches and comedy storylines.
39:03But Moolah showed no sign of slowing down. She teamed up with fellow wrestling legend, Mae Young.
39:09Mae Young wrestled seven different decades. She was tougher than Moolah, and that's saying something.
39:16Years ago, they had to put up a chicken wire fence up over the ring because they hated me so bad.
39:22It's insane that more people saw Moolah and Mae in the late 90s and early 2000s when they were both everybody's grandmother.
39:31Or maybe the Addams Family's grandmother.
39:33I have to be real careful with her. Everywhere I go, she either wants to get drunk or naked.
39:38This would be the place, I guess.
39:41And then, of course, they go out on TV and they can take the tremendous bumps and incredible falls and still somehow not break into a million pieces.
39:49Oh, come on!
39:51She should've stopped in her 60s, but she couldn't.
39:54I mean, my God, she was 80 years old wearing a checkered schoolgirl outfit.
39:59No, no. Stop. Stop. Scooter, stop it. Stop.
40:08Shhh.
40:10I get the last word, not you. Be good boy.
40:17What was her funeral like?
40:19It was crowded, and I don't, I'll tell you the truth, I don't know.
40:22I was just in a daze the whole time.
40:24I didn't even know that he was there.
40:26I just remember thinking that it was the end of an era.
40:32In 2007, Moolah passed away at the age of 84.
40:37The wrestling family showed up in large numbers to pay their respects.
40:42This is where she's buried.
40:44This is hers here, and this is Katie's, and this was Johnny May's here.
40:49She had that little thing put there.
40:50She said, when you want to come talk to me, there's a bench in there.
40:53You will get wet if it's raining.
40:58She was all I had.
41:00And I miss her every day.
41:03No one can ever, can ever be as good as she was. Never.
41:08Women's wrestling today has undergone a renaissance I don't think would have been possible without the rise of women in mixed martial arts, and specifically Ronda Rousey.
41:20Now it's so much more refined.
41:23It wasn't that way in Moolah's day because that wasn't her strong point.
41:27Ten years after Moolah's death, her impact on wrestling remains controversial.
41:36Well, I think in wrestling there is blurred lines between your character and who you really are.
41:41I believe that the fans couldn't tell the difference between Moolah and the character she was playing.
41:50Nobody really knows how it hurts you to hear that, that you worked for somebody and they pimped you out so you get where you did.
41:58She was, um, had never once ever drugged any of us.
42:04It just really pisses me off that they're taking away the legacy of the fabulous Moolah.
42:11I mean, I'll be honest with you, Bambi was never a famous wrestler, but if there's one thing that I could do, it would be to save Moolah's name and legacy and restore what she gave to the professional wrestling business.
42:26Moolah may have initially opened doors, but she quickly closed the door.
42:34She held women's wrestling back probably for 40 years.
42:39If Moolah had left Wendy with the belt, I think women's wrestling would have skyrocketed.
42:47She wasn't as big a star as Mildred Burke. She's not as big a star as Ronda Rousey, but she was the placeholder for 30 years.
42:53How do you think people should remember Moolah?
42:57Any way they like. Everybody have their own opinion. And me personally, I don't have an opinion of Moolah. None that I care to share.
43:07If I choose not to like her because of what she did to me, that's fine. But Moolah needs to be remembered. She was an icon in this business.
43:18You can't take away her history just because she's an asshole.
43:25All the girls that she trained remember her and they know that they wouldn't be where they are now without her and they wouldn't have had the career they had without her.
43:34Whoever's starting these rumors, you're not just calling Moolah a pimp. You're calling me a prostitute. And that hurts.
43:44And if you were not on that property, if you were not in that room, you don't know what happened and you need to shut up.
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