Dark Side of the Ring (2019) s01e06 Episode Script

You had a rough match last night,
wrestled a lady. She got 14 stitches.
Yeah, if that's what it takes
to try to win, that's what I'll do.
Can't say "women's wrestling"
without Fabulous Moolah.
If she had not run
the women's wrestling business,
may not be women's wrestling.
Introducing, first, to my right,
former World's Women's Champion,
the Fabulous Moolah!
As Moolah, the promoter,
I want to make money for my talent,
and want to make money for Moolah.
Oh, come on!
Even to this day,
if you say "women's wrestling,"
the picture of Moolah appears
in my mind.
If Moolah was alive today,
I'd probably slap her.
She was so jealous of any woman
that was younger than her
and wrestling.
She was also a manipulator,
and she was also a thief.
She wanted to hurt me. Bruise me.
I'll knock your teeth out!
There was drugs. There was sex.
There was a lot of abuse with Moolah.
I'm like, wow, they waited
'til she passed away
to say all these things
so she couldn't defend herself.
I was warned,
but I wanted to wrestle so bad.
She gave her whole life
to professional wrestling.
She gave all these girls
an opportunity,
and for nobody to stand up for her,
I don't know,
just couldn't deal with it.
She was
a great professional wrestler.
But she didn't know when to stop.
On this episode, the life,
legend, and controversy
of the Fabulous Moolah.
And it's Fabulous Moolah
with a WWF women's title
on the line here.
She made all of her costumes herself.
Anything flashy, she loved.
She was just that kind of person.
It never really impressed me
that much
because, to me,
she was just my mother
and I didn't really realize
how popular she was.
My name is Mary Austin,
and I'm the only child
of The Fabulous Moolah.
My mother kind of kept me
out of the spotlight,
but she loved the spotlight.
She was determined to do it.
When you really love something,
you put yourself into it,
and she had all of herself into it.
This is one Mary let me have.
You can see how beautiful it is,
sparkly, just like Moolah liked it.
Oh, yeah.
My name is Selina Majors.
I wrestled as Bambi.
Started in 1986.
I've been in it for 32 years.
I wanted my name, as a kid,
to be Dynamite Dixie Majors.
I've got posters that say,
"The Fabulous Moolah Champion
vs. Dynamite Dixie Majors."
I had this life-size doll,
and I'd take that doll
and body slam it
and climb up on the bed
and drop an elbow.
I'd stand in front of the mirror,
do little interviews and tell Moolah
how I was gonna come wrestle her.
As you can tell,
I like the bad guys, the heels.
She was a heel. She played that part.
My name's The Fabulous Moolah,
wrestling since I was 15,
and I am the world's champion
lady wrestler.
They hated her,
but that's what she wanted.
She's nasty, and she cheats!
Oh, I'd fix up a little spoon handle,
about the size of your finger,
roll it up with tape
and put it down in my bra.
The meaner she was,
the more they liked it.
And she loved being a heel.
Stick it in their eyes,
in the throat. Ha!
The Fabulous Moolah
started as a female wrestler,
then became
female wrestling champion,
then became the booker
of all the girl wrestlers.
I first broke in as a photographer.
I was a 15-year-old kid
and was doing all of the photography
sold in arenas
for Memphis wrestling territory.
"Moolah, can I get a couple
of pictures for the magazines?"
"Why of course you can."
She had stock poses.
Boom, 30 seconds
and she's off to the ring.
Moolah pioneered the hair pulling,
cat fighting, scratching,
crowd-pleasing kind
of women's wrestling.
She broke glass ceilings,
one after another.
She got into wrestling when
there was no women in wrestling.
Women's wrestling was banned
in Madison Square Garden,
and Moolah was the one
that was chosen to break the ban.
She was the featured girl
in first girl's match in the Garden.
Now that she's almost 60,
she's on MTV.
It's 1984,
the rock and wrestling connection.
Cyndi Lauper
and that whole era of network TV,
Madison Square Garden, MTV,
and rock 'n' roll stars
And this place
is ready to explode tonight!
got so much national attention
that NBC and everybody else
started looking at pro wrestling.
She made it from the mid-50s
to the dawn of MTV
for the biggest payoff she ever made.
There she is, the fabulous one,
The Fabulous Moolah,
putting her title on the line!
There will never be anyone
to have the guts that she had.
This must have been really old.
Look at that. Look at her hair.
This is a wrestling license.
Her mom passed away
when she was about nine, I think.
And her dad
and her brothers raised her,
so she learned how to fight
real early. It was rough for her.
I was an only child,
and she was just a teenager.
She went to wrestling matches
every week,
and my mother saw Mildred Burke,
said, "That's what I want to be."
It's Mildred Burke, of Los Angeles,
California, World Champion.
Back in the '30s and '40s,
Mildred Burke
was such a legitimate athlete.
She was in tremendous shape,
had a natural flair for wrestling.
But Billy Wolfe,
Mildred Burke's husband,
was managing the whole
women's troop, for good and bad.
When she was 17 or 18,
she went to see Billy Wolfe.
When a wrestler for Billy Wolfe,
you automatically had
to go to bed with him.
She said she wasn't doing it,
could find some other way to wrestle
without having to go to bed
with him or anyone else.
The worst experience you might say
you ever had with a promoter?
That's kind of hard to talk about.
Really is.
The Fabulous Moolah, at one point,
was married to Buddy Lee.
Buddy Lee used to wrestle.
Of course, they met
and sort of fell for each other.
And she did most of the wrestling,
and he did most of the booking.
She basically copied
the Mildred Burke
and Billy Wolfe playbook.
They kept their stable,
took bookings,
and more importantly, a booking fee
out of all of the girls' pay.
You knew why she got in business
and why she wanted to be a star.
She loved money.
Moolah 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.
The WWE made the announcement
on March the 12th,
to honor The Fabulous Moolah,
The Fabulous Moolah
Memorial Battle Royal.
I thought it was very nice
that they would name it after her,
keeping her legacy going.
Two or three days later,
that'd all been taken away.
The Fabulous Moolah controversy.
I think it's a bunch of bull.
I really think it's bull.
Moolah has an awful past.
-Some really, really sick shit.
-She was an evil person.
Moolah was pimping girls out.
A lot of the stuff is alleged.
We gotta say that.
Grossed out about it.
Name it something else.
It's not hard. Scrap it.
Stories started on the internet,
Fabulous Moolah, suddenly,
was a horrible person
who took advantage
of all these women,
and pimped them out
and fed them drugs, all this stuff.
They contacted the sponsors.
They had to take her name off.
I was very shocked
because I knew better.
I knew none of that was true.
And thanks to Nigel,
he took the lead way on it.
My name is Nigel Sherrod.
I'm mostly known as a wrestling host.
The "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.
I just wanted to clear her name
because Moolah's not here
to defend herself.
Did Moolah, indeed, take advantage
of the girls?
Some of the girls have said yes,
some have said no.
I think it was ignorant
canceling The Fabulous Moolah
Memorial Battle Royale
because I interviewed
over 20 women,
and they said the same thing,
"No truth to those rumors."
Accusations about Moolah polarized
the wrestling world.
They originated from
an investigative newspaper story
that quoted allegations
by the family
of one of her former wrestlers.
St. Mark, if you see these guys
moving around,
they are a professional film company,
and they are doing an episode
dealing with pro women wrestlers,
which one of them was my mother,
South Carolina's first
Black female professional wrestler,
Sweet Georgia Brown.
I'm Michael McCoy. I'm Senior Pastor
at St. Mark Baptist Church.
That article
in the  Colombia Free Times,
it was about what my mother
had to go through and endure
while she was in wrestling.
I started to try
to find out the truth.
Maybe tell us your name
and a little bit about yourself.
Yes, my name is Barbara Harsey,
and I am the proud daughter
of Susie Mae McCoy.
-Who is also known as?
-Sweet Georgia Brown.
When my mom went into wrestling,
she was
with the "so-called" great Moolah.
She said she was forced to do
a lot of things against her will.
Now, these are just stories I heard.
Do I know any truth to them?
No, I can't sit here
and say I know truth to it or not.
But, you know, when more
than one, two, three people
saying the same story
you know, somebody ain't lying.
Philip! Honey.
Can you walk these guys outside
and show them the banister?
This is my husband, Philip.
Hi, how are y'all doing?
Sure, sure I can.
-Back here, hanging.
-Oh, wow.
Back when Moolah died,
my husband,
he went over to tear down the barn
that the ring was in,
and he found a banister,
the women's wrestlers,
and he brought it back, thought
I would want, you know, keep it.
For the better part of 25 years,
every top girl wrestler
was trained, booked out by Moolah,
and controlled by Moolah's group.
Can you tell us
who Sweet Georgia Brown was?
Yeah, she was one of the first
African American women to wrestle,
and my mother trained her.
Believe it or not, it was
on a mattress in the living room.
It was unreal,
but they learned a lot.
I was told she had that drive
to go get it.
It was like she had a purpose.
She wanted to be there.
The first time I seen a wrestler,
the place was jam packed.
Throwing each other out the ring,
they're kicking, body-slamming.
I just figured, you know,
this is one tough lady.
Being one of the first Black females
to get into the wrestling business,
the KKKs was at their fullest.
Segregation was really bad
at that time.
Whenever they were on the road,
my mother was very protective.
There was a time in Mississippi,
she did have a run-in with KKKs.
She was thrown
on the floor of the bus,
and she was scared for her life.
She'd to have been super passionate
because, see, in 1964, she was
ranked number four in the world.
If she would've had the opportunity
to fight for the world's title,
she probably would've won it.
Moolah was not gonna let a student
challenge her for the world's title.
When my mom went into wrestling,
she left us with one of her sisters.
She'd call us names,
half-breeds. She was a witch.
God forgive me.
She's dead and gone.
Every time my mother went
on the road,
just about, she was pregnant.
One of my aunts said,
"Every time you come home,
you come with one of these
half-white kids, half-breeds,"
and we got mistreated,
you know, for years growing up
because of our color.
I hated where she had left us.
I hated her career.
But then, when I got
the full story from her,
I kind of understood.
There's a lot of abuse
with Moolah and Buddy Lee.
I saw her one time.
This big old car had pulled up.
She was getting out the back
of the car,
and it was only for a few hours.
I didn't know
the man's name at the time,
but he thought it was time to go.
My sister and I grabbed hold
of her leg,
but he kind of like pushed her,
and she hit her head
getting into the car.
I don't know if it was intentionally,
or it was an accident.
My mom said, everywhere she went
and everything she did
was done according
to Buddy Lee and Moolah.
I think she thought that it was
gonna be glamorous and glory,
but it turned out to be
something totally different.
I heard different stories
about my mother. It's real sad.
And I have, I have no reason
not to believe that account.
There was one gruesome time
that we talked about.
She was told to drink and pop pills,
and she was made to have sex
with that man.
On the road, some of the promoters
would pay some of the girls
until they slept
with other promoters.
From what my mother told me,
she was their favorite.
And you can call it entertaining
or whatever.
It's still pimping and prostitution.
Buddy Lee was not a nice person,
and my mother was on the road.
And she came home a day early
and caught him in her bed
with one of the girls
that she trained.
And she threw Buddy out.
A lot of the girls went with him.
Georgia Brown was one
that went with Buddy.
I started to search for my father.
One of the first places
where I started was
with the families Moolah.
Honestly, I was almost
kind of afraid a little bit
because I heard of the Moolah
that everybody else talked about,
but the Moolah that I met,
she seemed to be a fine lady.
I asked Moolah, "Did my mother
talk about who my father was?"
And Moolah took me to her wall,
and she pointed out this one picture.
And I said, "Who is this guy
right here in the middle?"
She said,
"Well, his name is Buddy Lee."
He was kind of rough on the girls.
That happened
with Sweet Georgia Brown.
She was one
that had to go to bed with Buddy.
And matter of fact, I think the son,
Michael, is proof of that.
If Buddy Lee's my father,
then that's who he is.
I wasn't coming to look for anything,
and I didn't want anything.
I wanted to close a chapter
in my life.
I knew that everything was over
when my uncle
burned up all of her stuff
and he poured gas on it,
and he set it on fire,
right there in front of us.
At the end, she kind of thanked him
because of the things
that she had to endure,
the things that she was made to do
by Moolah, by Buddy Lee,
by the industry itself.
Listening to your mom describe
some of the most horrific things
she had to do,
you can't just walk away.
Regardless of the abuse
she went through,
regardless of if they made her
use drugs,
they made her use alcohol,
whether they pimped her,
she still was South Carolina's first
Black female professional wrestler.
Honor it.
Sweet Georgia Brown's life
was shaped
by forces beyond her control.
For Moolah to succeed,
she would need to build
her own women's wrestling empire.
Fabulous Moolah single-handedly
built her women's training school
into a powerhouse
that dominated the industry.
It attracted young women
eager to follow in her footsteps.
In Columbia, South Carolina,
there was a location
called Moolah Drive
and on Moolah Drive
was the house that Moolah built
and also a variety
of other buildings.
It was a compound.
The women not only trained there,
but lived on the property
and Moolah presided over it
like a mother lion.
She took girls
from all walks of life,
And she brought them in.
She taught them a skill.
She put it together
like a group or a union,
took care of the girls, and made sure
they were taken care of.
She was one of the most powerful
women in the wrestling business.
If you were a female wrestler
and you wanted to get booked,
you had to go through Moolah,
or you weren't gonna work.
-I have a bunch of questions.
-Okay.
-I took truth serum before I came in.
-Okay.
My name is Wendi Richter.
Wendi Richter!
I was a professional wrestler
for over 20 years.
The first time
I watched a wrestling match,
I watched The Fabulous Moolah
vs. Vivian St. John.
And I told my friend,
"I could beat Moolah."
The referee gave me
Moolah's phone number.
She told me to come on
to Columbia, South Carolina.
I was there within two weeks.
My name's Victoria Otis.
I wrestled as Princess Victoria.
Princess Victoria!
I come from a very,
very abusive childhood,
and that's basically
what took me to wrestling.
You had to want it.
You had to bleed. You had to cry.
When I was wrestling,
it had been a year.
And I was told by my promoter,
"Look, I've done all I can do.
I've tried to get you booked.
The only way I can get you booked
is send you to Moolah."
I still remember a friend telling me,
"Vickie, don't go to Moolah's.
Find a job, get on your feet.
Just don't go to Moolah's."
I was warned,
but I wanted to wrestle so bad.
MOOLAH
When you first got to the property,
there's these big gates.
After dark, the gates were locked.
If you weren't home
and you weren't working,
you got locked out.
Moolah had a roommate
named Diamond Lil,
and we all called her Katie.
And I really like Katie.
My name is Diamond Lil,
and Buddy Lee
named me Diamond Lil.
Katie, from a hard background,
was a wrestler.
And she lived in the house with Moo,
and she called her Ma.
She's been right there with my mother
through thick and thin.
Katie liked to drink beer,
but she wasn't allowed to.
Katie used to come
to the pond, fishing.
I'd come drop a six-pack in the pond,
and her and I'd sit there
and drink beer.
I was famous for getting the beer
on the property.
They had apartments.
She'd put two or three girls
in there at a time.
They'd come down
to the gym every morning.
What I remember the most
about my training at Moolah's
was learning to drop kick.
I would go out there
and drop kick and drop kick,
and just land on the mat.
The mat wasn't soft.
It was all bloody.
And by that time,
a lot of it was mine.
There were buckets
strategically placed.
And it wasn't
if you were gonna throw up.
It was when you were gonna throw up
and would you hit the bucket?
The one thing that Moolah taught me:
take a bite and growl.
Moolah, she never trained me.
She just took the money,
and she had the girls train me.
She wanted her $300.
Now, can you imagine?
Four girls in one little house,
she's getting $1200 a month!
In the '80s?!
And on top of that,
she's taking 25 percent off
of what she's telling us we're paid.
Bull pucky.
Sitting here 24 hours a day,
making connections with promoters.
All you got to do
is sit your lazy butt in the car
and go to wrestle and collect money
and send me 25 percent.
And I thought that was fair.
There's a picture of me
in this brown outfit
that Moolah presented to me
at Christmas in front of the girls,
after she had given all of them
a $5 or a $10 gift.
That was no cheap outfit.
That was hand-beaded.
That was a $200 to $300 outfit.
She couldn't take me in privately
and give me this outfit,
had to in front of the girls.
That was another one
of her little manipulation things.
Everything
brings back memories now,
and it's like
the flood gates get opened.
I was in a match.
It was the first
or second week in September 1984.
A girl Shut up!
The night I broke my neck
in the ring.
A girl stumbled
and she sat on my head.
That was the day my world fell apart.
It hurt so bad I couldn't stand it.
I remember a moment at the hospital.
They had my neck braced.
I remember being on a cot.
Then the next thing I remember--
I don't know how--
back at Moolah's property,
Moolah's walking me to the ring,
said, "See if you can take a bump."
I took a bump, and I cried.
Every time I took a bump,
I felt like something was exploding.
This went on
for a month, two months.
Moo comes to me one day.
She said, "Hon,
if you go see this guy in Holland,
he'll give you a payday."
I thought to myself,
I can't wrestle, might as well.
I get on the phone with this guy,
and I make it explicitly clear,
it's separate motel rooms.
The conversation after I hung up
from him, with Moo was,
"You know, hon,
the nicer you are to him,
the bigger your payday will be.
You could really use a payday."
And so was Moolah insinuating,
like, the idea that
When Moolah looked at me and said,
"You know the nicer you are to him,
the nicer he'll be to you."
What else can I say?
When this guy first picked me up,
I said, "Damn, this guy
didn't get beat by the ugly stick.
He got beat
by the whole damn forest."
I wake up the next morning.
I catch him right here.
And I grab his hand,
and I'm holding it.
I said, "Dude,
I will break your wrist."
And she was fire-engine-red pissed
when I got back.
"I can't believe
she didn't sleep with him!"
Not a week after I got back
is when Moo came to me and said,
"You can't wrestle. I need my rent.
I'll take that yellow outfit.
I'll take the brown outfit,"
she gave me for Christmas.
I left the property that day
with my Chevy Malibu station wagon
and 20 bucks in my pocket.
She dumped me,
and I never wrestled again.
When I walked away 30 years ago,
my heart was broke.
I can't even explain it.
I missed the road. I missed
my friends. I missed my family.
And when I left,
do you know what Moo told the girls?
She told them I was in prison
for dealing cocaine.
She couldn't tell them
that I broke my neck
and I was of no use to her anymore,
so I had to go
'cause then they knew their fate.
I love wrestling.
To protect this business, to me,
is like protecting the country.
If wrestling needed me,
I'd do it in a heartbeat.
All someone has to do is ask.
-Moolah!
-As wrestling gained popularity
in the early 1980s, the WWF
looked to replenish its roster
with younger wrestlers.
Moolah's protégé, Wendi Richter,
was an obvious choice.
Wendi Richter, hell of a person.
Hell of a lady.
She loved her business.
She honed her skills.
She worked very hard
to become the wrestler she was.
Have an assumption why there was
friction between you and Moolah?
The only thing I can think of,
why so much friction,
is possibly she was jealous of me
'cause I was younger than her.
And like my father said,
they couldn't put her face
on a can of dog food to sell it.
Wendi Richter began
to eclipse her mentor,
and she left Moolah's stable
to join Vince McMahon.
When I left Moolah's,
I had a conversation
with Vince McMahon and told him
I didn't want to live there anymore,
did not want my check going to her.
I wanted the check to come to me
so I knew what I was making.
As soon as Vince took over
from his father,
he started making changes.
One 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 Cyndi Lauper.
"GIRLS JUST WANT
TO HAVE FUN," 1983
Girls they want to have fun
Cyndi Lauper was
on an airplane flight
with Lou Albano.
And then, Lou Albano tells everyone
that he was managing Cyndi Lauper.
I created and made Cyndi Lauper.
Took her from a nothing.
I don't know if anybody knows it,
but "Girls Just Want to Have Fun,"
he was in it.
That's how all this came together.
It all boiled down
to that Lou Albano said,
"I'm going to choose someone
to represent me in the ring,"
so Lou Albano
chose Fabulous Moolah.
Ooh, I'm happy!
And Cindy Lauper chose me.
Moolah may have
the Championship Belt,
but she also has Lou Albano
on her side.
Oh, Lou.
As soon as Cyndi Lauper got involved
with Lou Albano,
Vince McMahon saw gold
and fostered that connection
into the rock
and wrestling connection.
Happy New Year! At MTV!
Wrestlers giving their hand,
involved with rock 'n' roll
in the past year.
It brought the dated look
of wrestling
into the mainstream.
Wendi Richter morphed
from the Dallas Cowgirl
to Wendi Richter, a little bit more
Cyndi Lauper-ish, more rock 'n' roll,
and that's what led
the MTV movement there in 1984
that paved the way
for first WrestleMania.
They were giving girls more push
than they probably ever had.
They were really trying
to escalate the girls up,
to get equal to the men.
It was the turning point
for women's wrestling.
Vince wanted to make Wendi Richter
the equivalent as Hulk Hogan
so he had a male role model
and female role model.
Since the most widely recognized
female champion
had been The Fabulous Moolah,
Wendi needed to beat Moolah.
Well, ladies and gentlemen,
we'd like to introduce
the number one contender
for the ladies championship,
Miss Wendi Richter.
And the rest is history.
Ladies and gentlemen,
this title belt on the line
at Madison Square Garden
moments from now,
this lady to defend.
Their rivalry was about to explode
in what would become
one of the most watched matches
of all time.
That 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.
Moolah had been very guarded
of that championship for a long time,
but Vince was able to write
the appropriate amount on a check,
and that changed Moolah's mind.
And also, by doing that,
Moolah got
Vince McMahon Jr.'s loyalty for life.
One, two
That's when everything changed.
The winner of this title
and new World Women's Champion,
Wendi Richter!
Oh, my word!
When I won the championship,
it was a feeling like no other.
Everyone was up on their feet
and screaming.
I can't believe someone beat her
after 28 years,
and that someone was me.
It was a big deal for the fans.
They wanted to see Wendi win.
It was a bigger deal
inside the business
because two generations of wrestlers
had come and gone
without seeing
The Fabulous Moolah lose.
It was shocking to folks
in the business who knew
about the stranglehold
that Moolah had had.
Right here is the new champ,
the terrific symbol of the new woman.
My match against Moolah
for the championship
was kind of ground zero
for women's wrestling.
It moved towards a different level
of women's wrestling.
See, what a lot of people
don't understand is,
once you step in that ring,
you're addicted.
I think Moolah
let her ego get in her way.
And Moolah couldn't quit.
Wendi, show them what you got!
Cyndi Lauper!
Oh my We were on the top
of a skyscraper.
I remember, I was hot,
I was hungry, I was thirsty,
and it felt like
the day would never end.
When I went to visit my father
and my grandmother
in Kokomo, Indiana,
people recognized me.
I'm thinking,
they know me in Kokomo?
Even though Wendi
was a household name,
Wendi wasn't getting paid
like a household name.
I found out, early in my career,
that the men were being paid
far more than the women.
But if I'm the only one saying that,
one person can be replaced.
Vince McMahon
had been pushing Wendi Richter,
gonna make her a superstar,
getting too big for her britches.
He decided that she lose the belt.
Who's gonna beat her for the belt?
I was on the road constantly,
but it was always matches
against Moolah, over and over.
I'll never forget, one time,
she got me in a move,
the Boston Crab.
You never go all the way back.
You can break someone's back.
Well, she did.
She tried to break my back.
She wanted to put me out.
My spine snapped like firecrackers.
She was just so bitter.
I really believe in the golden rule,
treat others
as you'd like to be treated,
but sometimes
you gotta treat fire with fire.
And in the ring, when that bell rang,
you had no friends.
When I was to wrestle
the Spider Lady
for a championship match,
it changed my career.
It changed my life.
I didn't think anything of it.
I thought, well, it's just
another championship match,
and it's against the Spider Lady.
Wendi said that
Moolah had showed up.
Didn't understand
why Moolah was there.
I'd wrestled the Spider Lady before.
I didn't recall her being that size.
A very determined young lady.
Take one heck of a wrestler
to strip that title from her.
The match really didn't go that good.
It was just a wrestling hold.
Spider going Oh, small package!
The referee counted one.
I kicked out, had my shoulder up.
Two, three.
And that was it.
What was that? It appears that
the referee has made a three-count.
The match was over.
Then the masked person
took their mask off.
And it was Moolah.
It is Moolah!
It is Moolah! Take a look, kids!
Fabulous Moolah, oldest, saltiest dog
that knows all the tricks,
she was the one chosen
because it was thought that,
if things did break down,
that she could handle Wendi
legitimately.
Did you have any idea that
that was Moolah in the match at all?
No. I couldn't tell who it was.
Moolah! Moolah! Moolah!
It was obvious
who was under that mask.
Everybody in the arena knew
who was under that mask.
Wendi knew.
This double-cross blurred the lines
between business and storyline.
Whatever the truth was,
Wendi came out the loser.
I demanded
to talk to Vince McMahon,
and no one would tell me
where he was.
I probably would have killed him
with my bare hands.
What Vinny and Moo did to her,
Wendi was over a million dollars
at that time.
Her and Cyndi Lauper,
and the cartoon, The Goonies
Wendi was over as big as Hogan,
and maybe that was the problem.
The only thing I can think of
is I was asking to be paid fairly.
I feel like it was a sad situation
that happened
because the girls should be paid
more than they were at the time.
But when a promoter tells you
who's gonna win or lose,
you have to go with the one
who's running the show,
whether you like it or not.
And it was her choice
to walk away from it.
If everything had worked with Wendi,
there would've been
an established women's division
with women featured
in more important matches
a lot before it actually happened.
I was angry for what she just did
to women's wrestling.
For so long she held it back,
she held it back, she held it back.
Then, finally, it started to bloom,
and she killed it.
I think Moolah was afraid.
I think she was afraid
of walking away.
I left 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.
Have you ever seen the footage
of the match?
I 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!
In 1995, The Fabulous Moolah
became the first woman inducted
into the WWF
Wrestling Hall of Fame.
Tonight is the greatest night
of my life,
being inducted
into the WWF Hall of Fame.
By the year 2000,
the WWF had phased out
traditional
women's athletic wrestling,
in favor of strip matches
and comedy storylines.
But Moolah showed no sign
of slowing down.
She teamed up with fellow
wrestling legend Mae Young.
Mae Young wrestled
in seven different decades,
tougher than Moolah--
that's saying something.
Years ago, they had to put up
a chicken wire fence up over the ring
because they hated me so bad.
It's insane that more people
saw Moolah and Mae
in the late '90s and early 2000s
when they were both
everybody's grandmother.
Maybe Addams family's grandmother.
I have to be real careful with her.
She wants to get drunk or naked.
This would be the place.
And then they go out on TV
and can take the tremendous bumps
and incredible falls,
and still not break
into a million pieces.
Come on!
She should've stopped in her 60s,
but she couldn't.
I mean, my God,
she was 80 years old,
wearing a checkered
school girl outfit?
No, no, stop. Stop.
Scooter, stop it. Stop! Shh.
I get the last word, not you.
Be a good boy.
What was her funeral like?
It was crowded.
Tell you the truth, I don't know.
I was just in a daze the whole time.
I didn't even know that he was there.
I just remember thinking
that it was the end of an era.
In 2007, Moolah passed away
at the age of 84.
Wrestling family showed up
in large numbers
to pay their respects.
This is where she's buried.
This is hers here.
This is Katie's,
and this was Johnnie Mae's.
She had that thing put there,
said, "When you wanna
talk to me, there's a bench.
You won't get wet if it's raining."
She was all I had.
And I miss her every day.
No one can ever, can ever be
as good as she was. Never.
Women's wrestling today
has undergone
a renaissance I don't think possible
without women
in mixed martial arts,
specifically, Ronda Rousey.
Now it's so much more refined.
It wasn't that way in Moolah's day
because that wasn't her strong point.
Ten years after Moolah's death,
her impact on wrestling
remains controversial.
Well, I think, in wrestling,
there is blurred lines
between your character
and who you really are.
I believe that the fans
couldn't tell the difference
between Moolah
and the character she was playing.
Nobody really knows
how it hurts you to hear that,
that somebody pimped you out
so you could get where you did.
She was had never once
ever drugged any of us.
It just really pisses me off
that they're taking away the legacy
of The Fabulous Moolah.
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 save Moolah's name
and legacy,
and restore what she gave
to the professional wrestling
business.
Moolah may have
initially opened doors,
but she quickly closed the door.
She held women's wrestling back
probably for 40 years.
If Moolah had left Wendi
with the belt,
I think women's wrestling
would have skyrocketed.
She wasn't as big a star
as Mildred Burke,
not as big a star as Ronda Rousey,
but was the placeholder for 30 years.
How do you think
people should remember Moolah?
Any 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.
If 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.
You can't take away her history
just because she's an asshole!
All the girls
that she trained remember her,
and they know that they wouldn't be
where they are now without her,
and wouldn't have had
the career they had, without her.
Whoever is starting these rumors,
you're not just calling Moolah
a pimp.
You're calling me a prostitute,
and that hurts.
And 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.