Minor news items that don't deserve a thread

[Snitsky's back acne]

It's revisionist WWE history.
Stephanie and Vince loved Mae, she's been turned into a legendary figure by the company and is relevant to their audience.

If they were truly bothered about history they would have called it the Mildred Burke Classic but everyone would go 'Who the fuck is Mildred Burke!?'.

[westlondonmist]

As Louch has pointed out Fabulous Moolah is probably the worst person to name a tournament after. Stories of pimping, getting female wrestlers addicted to drugs so they would spend all their earnings on it and tricking many women into signing dodgy contracts that left many of the women working for a year plus before earning any money as they were contracted to all training, food, rent and travel costs. Also once you finished your training you would then train the new recruits and not get paid any extra. She also controlled the women's scene to try and make sure she was the only well known women's wrestler.

[BomberPat]

The history of women's wrestling is full of nasty people and horrible stories - Moolah seems to be about the worst of the bunch, but it makes you question what else was going on there.

Before Moolah, it was Billy Wolfe who had a stranglehold on the industry, controlling Mildred Burke as champion while beating her in private and cheating on her with other female wrestlers in his stable - because if you didn't sleep with Wolfe, you didn't get a push. And that only got worse after Wolfe and Burke divorced, to the point of Wolfe and his son kicking the shit out of her in a car park. Wolfe basically controlled women's wrestling in the NWA, and long before Moolah came along, would basically pimp out female wrestlers to other promoters - they'd get booked if they slept with the promoter, and usually plenty of the wrestlers as well, and the promoters welcomed that because it meant the boys weren't going off and picking up hookers on the road. Once Burke was out of his life, he blacklisted her from the NWA and basically made it impossible for her to get bookings anywhere but the small outlaw promotions, effectively killing her career.

Wolfe was probably worse than Moolah, but Moolah learned from him. She would control women's bookings, owned the NWA (later WWF) Women's Title and would - with a few rare exceptions - only defend it against "her" girls, and take such a significant cut of her wrestlers' pay that they were effectively in debt to her for their whole careers. There are plenty of allegations of her pimping girls to male promoters, or selling them for "private" photoshoots, even while underage.

Even as late as the '80s she was actively sabotaging the careers of any wrestlers who she felt would undermine her control - Moolah, even in her prime, wasn't a good wrestler, so she'd cut off anyone who made her look bad, hurting the entire women's scene in the process. She screwed over the Glamour Girls and the Jumping Bomb Angels in the WWF and Japan by bullshitting the Japanese promoter that she was representing the WWF and demanded a title change that was never booked, resulting in both teams getting fired - not just because those teams weren't from her stable, but because the relationship with Japan wasn't conducted through her, so she felt like her stranglehold weakening.

 

Mae probably wasn't much better - there's plenty of stories of her beating, robbing and blackmailing men, though it's never been quite clear how many were in retaliation to attempted sexual assault, or how many were stories invented at the time for some colour in the press. But she lived and remained friends with Moolah for decades, presumably at least in full knowledge of what Moolah was doing, so she's hardly a saint herself.

Of course, nowadays you'd never see promoters giving preferential treatment to the women prepared to sleep with them...

[garynysmon]

2 hours ago, Snitsky's back acne said:

It's revisionist WWE history.
Stephanie and Vince loved Mae, she's been turned into a legendary figure by the company and is relevant to their audience.

The WWE have their favourites, but this can often change with the wind too.

You've just reminded me of the mid to late 90's, after falling out with Bruno and Billy Graham and WCW had snapped up Hogan, Savage etc, how WWF TV would have you think that Fred Blassie and Ernie Ladd had been Hulk Hogan level superstars during their era.

[D@mm]

I guarantee women are still sleeping with wrestling promoters and people in power even in this day and age to get ahead, otherwise why would Rosa Mendes be shagging Michael Hayes etc.

[Nick Soapdish]

7 hours ago, D@mm said:

I guarantee women are still sleeping with wrestling promoters and people in power even in this day and age to get ahead, otherwise why would Rosa Mendes be shagging Michael Hayes etc.

 

[dopper]

WWE (with tweets from both Triple H & Stephanie) have officially acknowledged that Asuka has beaten Goldberg's 173-0 undefeated streak.

 

The way Stephanie phrased it in her tweet was: "Congratulations Asuka on breaking Goldberg's record as the champion with the longest undefeated streak in WWE history".

That sounds to me like they are trying to claim Goldberg's 173-0 streak was part of WWE history, despite the fact that streak ended 4.5 years before he ever worked for WWE.

 

They did the same thing with the Greatest Finishing Moves in WWE History dvd. Sting's scorpion deathlock was in the Top 10 despite never being done in a WWE ring (at that time).

[Onyx2]

Goldberg tweeted her congratulations too, claiming he passed the torch to her. 

[Ambulance Chaser]

Well that all feels a bit weird. Dunno why just does. Did they not even mention it on TV? That's a BIG deal, a landmark in the business. Odd

[The King of Old School]

1 hour ago, dopper said:

WWE (with tweets from both Triple H & Stephanie) have officially acknowledged that Asuka has beaten Goldberg's 173-0 undefeated streak.

 

The way Stephanie phrased it in her tweet was: "Congratulations Asuka on breaking Goldberg's record as the champion with the longest undefeated streak in WWE history".

That sounds to me like they are trying to claim Goldberg's 173-0 streak was part of WWE history, despite the fact that streak ended 4.5 years before he ever worked for WWE.

 

They did the same thing with the Greatest Finishing Moves in WWE History dvd. Sting's scorpion deathlock was in the Top 10 despite never being done in a WWE ring (at that time).

 

Well, WWE owns WCW, so anything that happened in WCW is now WWE history.

[PunkStep]

The streak she's broken is just in terms of length rather than matches won, isn't it? That's how I read it anyway.

[Onyx2]

It's number of matches. The claim is she's gotten to 175-0 versus Bill's 173.

 

[The Dart]

Fairly surprising that in 19 months she's only had 175 matches.

[tiger_rick]

9 matches a month in a development territory with limited house shows doesn't seem an unreasonable amount.

[WyattSheepMask]

I'd have thought that Andre would have had a better streak. Wasn't his loss to Hogan at WM3 his first in WWE?