Original subtitles

From this day forth, I will haunt your very breath!

I will be your shadow in the darkness!

Hailing from wrestling royalty,

Luna Vachon emerged as one of the squared circle's most unhinged

and most unforgettable characters.

When you saw Luna, you were seeing a monster come to life.

Crazy, wild, Satanic.

You all can keep your stinking,

-rotten mouths shut! -Despite being

consistently marginalized by a male-dominated industry,

Luna was driven to push boundaries and redefine women's wrestling.

-My mom was the bad girl. -Come on!

You saw her in an alley, you'd want to run.

Dare to have the balls

to do the gimmick that I do and rip my vocal chords.

I'm here to say what I have to say.

Her volatile persona sprang from a traumatic upbringing

and a string of personal tragedies.

It wasn't an easy childhood,

her dad having a wrestling company, wrestlers staying in the house.

She was pretty. They took advantage.

While working alongside wrestling's top stars, her battles

with addiction and mental health became all-consuming.

She's schizophrenic. That's some serious shit.

She'd go from, "Oh, thank you so much.

Oh, that's so sweet," to, "What are you talking about?!"

Of course she was self-medicating. Sniffing yayo all day, every day.

She would stay up for a month straight.

-Making me sick! -The next day, she'd be like,

"I don't know. What happened?" "You don't remember punching him?"

This is destruction. A camera man just got knocked down.

Betrayed by the world she adored,

one final act of defiance would ignite her self-destruction.

-She stood up to Vince. -She didn't want to just be boobs.

She wanted to be a wrestler. That was it.

That was enough. She fucking had it.

You're in pain, you're hurting, so you turn to other things.

And up in flames you go.

There are two ways

to slide easily through life.

One way's to believe everything.

The other, to doubt it.

Luna Vachon and The Black Harts.

I used to always think wrestling was real. As a kid,

you think it's real. Like, that's what she always was to me.

She was always Luna.

Hi, my name's Van Hurd,

and my mom's Luna Vachon.

Ever since I can remember, I was so young,

the mohawk, the bleached hair, the extensions.

Very, very soon,

I will wipe you from this earth!

It was nuts. She would show up to my elementary school with a snake.

I just remember she came to give me a hug and that snake almost got me.

I was so embarrassed. I hate to say it, I was.

But then, it was just normal for me. That was my mom.

I believe she loved wrestling more than she loved anything in life.

Her passion truly was pro wrestling. Anything she ever spoke to me about

in her deeper, darkest hours was pro wrestling.

I'm David Heath, better known as Gangrel.

I've been a pro wrestler for 34 years.

Gangrel there. Look at his teeth!

I met Luna at a Florida Championship Wrestling show.

She came in, kicked the door open. She hollers, "Fresh meat,"

and points at me. I'm the only one there.

Then she slams the door and walks off.

Now, you gotta picture a girl with a mohawk,

blood all out of her nose, her tongue's like, "Agh!"

She's growling. I was terrified.

I didn't want anything to do with her after I met her.

But, we became friends. So much so that we said,

"I'd never go out with somebody like you."

She says, "I'd never go out with you either."

I go, "Good, I'm glad we agree." And somewhere it crossed the lines.

There's many faces to my mom. Her real name is Gertrude.

And she used to, like, tell me nightmare stories

about how she had to stand in front of the class

and say her name was Gertrude.

And when they found out that her dad and her uncles were the Vachons,

and they were, like, some of the most hated tag teams ever...

Oh, the Vachon family are like wrestling royalty in Canada.

I'm Mick Foley, often known

as The Hardcore Legend.

Luna's uncle was Maurice "Mad Dog" Vachon.

Her aunt was Vivian Vachon.

Get your hands off me. Who do you think you are?

Luna's father was Paul "Butcher" Vachon.

All of the Vachons were, you know,

odd in a beautiful type of way.

Brutal chop to the neck. "Butcher" Paul Vachon had his moments.

My name is Paul "The Butcher" Vachon.

And I am the father of Luna Vachon.

Luna's origins with the Vachon family are rooted

in a chance encounter

following a harrowing tragedy on December 18th, 1966.

I was wrestling in Atlanta, Georgia,

and I was staying at a motel and I heard a gunshot.

And at first I opened the door and looked around

and couldn't see anything.

So, I went back to sleep.

The next morning, there was a knock at my door.

She said, "The man that owned this motel shot himself.

He was my husband."

And I met her daughter who was then 4 years old.

Who became my daughter because I married the widow.

To Luna, I was the only father she ever knew.

Adopted into the Vachon dynasty, Luna is instantly enamored

by her new family's celebrity status.

My aunt was one of the greatest female wrestlers of all time.

She was known as The Wrestling Queen.

I'll break her leg!

I grew up going on the road and cleaning up the dressing room

for her and helping her put her curlers in her hair,

and that's all I wanted to do was be like my Aunt Vivian.

She wanted nothing more than to join that kind of pantheon and, you know,

carry on the tradition. They tried to talk her out of it.

She did talk about how her family said,

"This is really a very hard industry for women."

But there was no stopping her.

My name's Jeannine Mjoseth.

I used to be known as Mad Maxine, or Lady Maxine.

Well, I'm 6-foot-2.

And I've always been athletic. And I love costumes.

I'm an extrovert. I thought, why not use what God gave me to,

you know, really make a splash? I went out and got a mohawk.

I think Moolah saw money in my mohawk.

The latest protégé of The Fabulous Moolah.

To train at Moolah's was the equivalent of going to Harvard.

I mean, she was the place that women went

to become professional women wrestlers.

It is The Fabulous Moolah!

Also training with The Fabulous Moolah,

Mad Maxine meets a teenage Luna,

whose sweet demeanor is worlds away from her alter ego.

She looked like a babyface. She had this very cherubic, very sweet face.

And when you would say, "You should be a babyface," she'd get so mad.

Because all she ever wanted was to be, like, a badass heel.

I had a strong sense of trepidation

because what I saw going on at this camp,

the young, underaged trainees, the little lambs, as I think of them,

you know, the naive young women

who thought they could trust Moolah, thought she was like a mother figure,

but then she'd take advantage.

I never seen her afraid of anybody, but when Moolah walked into a room,

she'd shake and be super nervous and scared, like they'd been beaten.

Moolah held a lot of power over her. Moolah would say something like,

"You're sleeping with me tonight, hun."

So, you know, I just heard a lot of stories like that.

She said that Moolah had sent her out to this guy in the west

and the guy said he'd pay her $500 to take photographs.

She didn't know that you can't just trust people.

And so, she went out there.

The guy attacked her, tried to rape her. She fought him off.

Obviously, you can't trust a person who does that to a 16-year-old girl.

It's just... It was appalling.

But she said, you know, "Moolah's the only show in town.

You've gotta train with her if you want to make it."

Every girl that trained with her has a Moolah story.

My name is Kim Sacks.

You might also know me as Penelope Paradise.

Or, better yet, the great and powerful,

beautiful but very deadly Penelope Paradise.

She had such high hopes, and she wanted so much.

I mean, she wanted to be Hulk Hogan.

She wanted to be, like, the best heel there was.

Luna leaves Moolah's camp behind

to join Championship Wrestling from Florida,

where Kevin Sullivan and his Army of Darkness are terrifying fans

across the state.

Kevin Sullivan had a great mind.

You had to be able to draw

from the same cities every single week.

And you did that by getting them emotionally invested.

Characters had to be on almost 24/7.

I have done some horrible things in the past!

They were not afraid to get fans upset.

Really upset.

Evil and darkness has always prevailed.

I saw a face of fear.

Kevin had Florida scared to death of him.

Just, you know-- Tampa was scared to death of him.

Pandemonium everywhere, baby!

And people thought that he was passing curses on to them.

All this devil stuff, nobody had seen anything like that.

People were legitimately scared of him.

On behalf of Sports Review Magazine...

In October of 1985,

Luna makes her debut as an unassuming journalist,

and her character quickly falls victim

to the dark powers of Kevin Sullivan.

Oh, my God. Oh, no, he just--

My mom coming out as a reporter, and then,

Kevin Sullivan came out and whacked her face.

All of a sudden, she turned into Luna.

You know, she was considered crazy.

And crazy and lunatic, they're basically the same thing,

so Lunatic Luna.

And now Luna offered up everything to me.

She stripped herself of vanity.

You know, she shaved her head

and she put all these kind of veins on her face.

And she interacted with the camera and the fans

and in a way that was just monstrous.

I swear she's possessed.

It wasn't as though she went behind the curtains after her match

and then, all of a sudden, she's just, you know, Luna.

She carried on the pretense that this was who she actually was.

Well, that's it for Coach's Corner.

With her new career now taking off,

Luna indulges in the extreme excesses of the era.

It snowed every day in Miami, in the '80s,

is what everyone said back then.

If my memory serves me correctly, it was, like, Quaaludes

and coke and acid.

She pushed every boundary she could come across.

How can you take a hundred pills a day? How do you even get

a hundred pills a day?

She wanted everything to look like,

you know, everything was beautiful and all roses.

You knew it wasn't, but that's what she tried to portray.

I don't think it was a very easy childhood,

with her having wrestlers staying in the house.

I mean, she's claimed to have been, you know, raped and stuff like that.

I believe there were some inappropriate family relations,

maybe.

I didn't know Vivian at all.

I never met her. She didn't talk about her very much.

She just said that she was abused by her aunt.

And she just basically left it at that.

-She didn't want people to know that. -Like, a little girl can idolize.

You want to be like somebody, you idolize something.

People will use that against you. That happened to her.

I wasn't there, so I didn't see it. But I believe some of it.

I think it probably set the path

for some of the self-destruction later on.

What she called love, that wasn't really love, you know.

I don't think, knowing the family that she's from,

that anybody would do that.

I don't believe it.

Luna Vachon's deranged antics captivated audiences,

but, unknown to fans, her over-the-top persona

was born from a lifelong struggle with mental health outside the ring.

She was studied from the Emory University since she was 2

for depression and being bipolar

and schizophrenia and stuff like that.

So, it was a roller coaster of hoop-de-hoops and loop-de-loops.

Luna has this persona of being tough, badass, but really,

she was the shyest person in the room.

A lot of people called her Angelle, or I called her Angelle.

That's what her dad would call her 'cause she hated Gertrude or Trudy.

Give it 10 minutes, it's like Florida weather.

She'd be some other personality.

There was, like, Angel, Trudy, Angelle, you know, like...

-Then there was Luna. -She was chemically imbalanced.

She was definitely bipolar.

In her day-to-day life, you would call her Angel.

And she spoke with this childlike voice.

And then you could be hanging out with her,

and she'd get a phone call and they'd piss her off,

and then, she's Luna and she's crazy for the rest of the day.

I mean, one time, we were in Tampa and Luna and I had to share a room.

And she got into a tangent, she just snapped for whatever reason.

One thing led to another and it's me and her from bed to bed.

Lamps are flying. You would think we were killing each other.

You know, and then now we gotta go wrestle.

Even no matter how mad you get,

somebody can hold you and say, "Okay, you've got to stop."

You couldn't do that with her. She'd make a joke like,

"Oh, I better take my little blue pill," but she knew

-if she was really wobbly, let's say. -It would be probably difficult

-to be married to her. -Yeah.

But, like, picking Dicky wasn't the best situation.

-Dirty Dick Slater. -I hear they call you Filthy Richard

in Parts Unknown, but that's another story.

My first stepdad. I heard he used to beat my mom up.

I never saw anything. I never even really saw them fight.

I never saw them fight. Ever. I never saw him lay a hand on her.

I saw her bruises, after the fact.

I'm sure she did not give them to herself.

And when they split up, I was like, "Okay, good. That's out of her life."

We met at Florida Championship Wrestling. Terrified of her.

Swore her off. Bloody nose, scared. "Fresh meat."

Next thing you know, I'm tagging with Tom Nash.

We're doing the Black Hart thing. And Tom knew her from school.

So, then, a month or two down the road or something, he goes,

"Luna called. She wants to go down to training with us."

I'm like, "No! I don't want anything to do with her."

Still, I don't know why.

Whatever the forces of the universe, nature.

We get in, she's in the back seat. He's sat over here. I'm driving.

And then she crawls over, and she starts hitting me.

"Why don't you like me?"

She rips my shirt off. I get to the house.

His name's Rusty Brooks. He had a ring in his yard.

And I don't know if she jumped off the top rope

or where she came from,

but she latched down and bit me in the middle of my back.

She was on, like a pit bull. I couldn't get her off.

I'm trying to reach. She's locked in.

I end up diving through the ropes, which breaks her off.

And I got her against this tree.

And he's like, "No, hey, that's Dick Slater's girl!"

I go, "She's crazy. She's bit me!"

And he goes, "That's Luna, you idiot! You know, chill out."

Before that scar healed on my back...

I call her the original vampire because before the scar healed,

-we were best friends. -With Luna as their manager,

Tom Nash and David Heath become fixtures

on the independent circuit as The Black Harts.

Listen, you worry nothing about the snake.

You should worry about the tag team titles

because they'll be around the waist of The Black Harts.

Tom had a big crush on her.

And the next thing you know, like, they were married.

He adored her. He did. And he did love her.

Tom Nash and my mom were married.

And Tom used to go to work and then Dave used to show up.

That's some shady shit right there.

They got in a few fights and he accused me of being with her.

And he started talking a lot of stuff.

"I know you guys are together." This and this and that.

Then, he swung on me and I snapped. I feel really bad.

I puked the next day when I saw what I could do to somebody.

The fallout from the fight

breaks up The Black Harts.

Shortly after, Luna's brief marriage

to Tom Nash also comes to an end.

I look at her as this wildflower on a side road.

You ever see a beautiful wildflower in the wind?

If you pick it and cage it, it's gonna die. You know?

So you just should admire it from afar for the beauty it is.

She was a beautiful person. She had a lot of love in her.

She just wanted to be loved and was so misunderstood, so...

So, where was the wedding?

Oh, it was great. It was Halloween. I wrestled a cage match that night.

Came home, right at midnight. And then we got married.

Yeah, instead of wedding rings, we got vampire bites, yeah.

Then I got her here, right there.

Put it on my drinking hand,

so I remember not to drink too much so she wouldn't kill me.

The newlyweds perform together across the globe,

with an eye to eventually breaking into the World Wrestling Federation.

She was sending stuff in for me to get booked.

She was sending my stuff, with me and her in it.

And then, she got hired. I'm not gonna lie, I was, like,

jealous and stuff, I was like...

But I was super, super happy for her at the same time.

On April 4th, 1993, Luna's dreams would come true as she debuts

in the WWF on wrestling's grandest stage, WrestleMania.

You're watching WrestleMania. All of a sudden,

your mom's coming out with Shawn Michaels

and they're at Caesar's Palace, they're outside.

And then, her and Sherri Martel get into it.

-Oh, she clotheslines Sherri! -Boy, did she nail her!

Luna Vachon! Picking Sherri up!

I was like, "Oh, my goodness."

She did it, she did it. That was her dream, and there she is.

She was the first female ever to be on a video game.

The game was called WWF Raw.

We got that whole console just for that game.

And I, Luna Vachon...

I will be the goddess of the squared circle!

All you're doing is trying to make it. Then, if you put it in

all the extracurriculars like the drugs,

the depression, and the bipolar,

it's running, the days, and it keeps going fast.

-Next thing you know, it's gone. -After 15 years of self-sacrifice

and struggling in the independent territories,

Luna Vachon finally reaches the pinnacle of wrestling.

-Luna Vachon! -I'd see her a little bit.

Sometimes, once a year, once or twice a year.

She was grinding, she was on the road. I was with my grandma.

A lot of the girls did not have children, because--

Or they had 'em very late,

after their careers were over because they-- I mean, you can't.

She lived in this little pink 1950s trailer

that had, like, this porch addition to it.

And I knocked on her door, and she had obviously been crying.

Her eyes were all swollen. And I asked her what was wrong.

She said it was one of her sons' birthday.

And I didn't even know she had kids until that point.

She did not talk about her kids, mostly.

My mom hit the road.

She had a dream. And she went and did it.

This man

makes me hot!

A few months later, Luna is paired with WWF star Bam Bam Bigelow.

While she is regularly appearing on national television,

Luna rarely gets to showcase her in-ring skills.

At that time,

there just wasn't a lot of emphasis

on women's wrestling in WWE,

or in the United States as a whole.

So, the women who were really talented in the ring

were often utilized as managers.

Luna was a real wrestler. She was a hardcore, real wrestler,

and she should never have been relegated to valet status.

I mean, we had five to six girls on a roster.

That was our roster back in the day in the Federation. Really?

Hi, my name is Debrah,

otherwise my wrestling fans

know me as Medusa.

-To the outside! -Attack!

There really wasn't a women's division.

There wasn't anything they did well with the women.

It was a men's committee.

Just men

at a round table circle-jerking, not knowing what to do with women.

Why don't we have our names on the frickin' paper

or the marquee or...?

And it was... "and more." We were "and more" half the time.

It really pissed us off, you know. Luna and I did not like that at all.

The saying has always been

that girls have to work a hundred percent harder

to just get 10% of the recognition.

Ninety percent of the guys were perfect gentlemen, they were fine.

There's always that 10%. There's always one or two

in the dressing room that's gotta be a smart-ass.

Luna would go around, going, "My clit's bigger than your dick!"

You know, and those were things that she did.

I remember being in Canada, and we were wrestling.

And I said, "Luna, you know,

at this point, I don't give a shit. Let me drop the belt to you."

She was like, "I can't do that, man.

I can't." I said, "I'm gonna drop the belt.

What are they gonna do, fuckin' fire me? Okay. Whatever.

I am just so sick of them not doing anything further with us women,

and especially you.

And they don't have the audacity just one time, in Canada,

of all places, won't even drop you the belt? Really?"

I said, "When we go home, we go bah-dah-bing, bah-dah-boom,

here's the comeback. Just quick.

Roll me up, one, two, three." She goes, "Are you serious?

You'd do that for me?" I said, "Yeah, let's do it.

I will lay down and give you the belt."

She just, like, fucking lost it.

And she was crying and she's like, "I can't do it. I won't do it.

I won't let them fire you over something like this."

I remember, I was just laying, getting there for the three count.

She pulled me up and wouldn't do it

and I'm like, "Let's fucking just do it!"

She wouldn't do it. I tried.

She never, ever got the belt. She never had the title there.

Frustrated over the lack of opportunity for female wrestlers,

Luna forges a bond with Sherri Martel,

another skilled wrestler

downgraded to manager status.

I stand just like any other good woman, Mean Gene.

I'm gonna stand right by my man.

-Sherri, let's go! -Yes, Shawn!

On her way, sensational Sherri!

She loved Sherri. She loved Sherri to death.

They were friends, they traveled together.

They was thick as thieves.

They would come home, like,

Luna would be asleep for like three days.

I could poke a stick at her, like, "What's going on here?"

I knew nothing about pills or Placidyls or anything like that.

So, when I found out, like, she was taking these pills

and it was Sherri and all that, I confronted her, it didn't go well.

I think it was her darkest times, in my personal opinion,

where she was out of control, like, beyond, like...

She could have, you know, died any-- It was, like, just that bad.

Luna could've been right there at the top, you know.

And there's no reason she couldn't have.

It's just between the mental deficiencies

of whatever it was that she had, and the drugs.

They put me in rehab because I was drinking.

And then when I got to rehab, they fired me.

Their excuse was, "It's for her own good." They said they were worried

about her mental health. They said, "It's for her own good."

Is there positive stuff that you learned

from growing up like this?

Yeah, don't do drugs. For real.

She probably chose her extracurricular activity

into the drugs because of wanting just to forget.

And it's like a facade.

Sometimes when you get so soaked up

and just caught up into it all, you get lost.

And she always would try to kill herself. She did it a couple times.

You ever see her wrists, there were big scars.

You look at your mom like, why'd you do that?

You know what I mean? Why would you do that?

Despite her personal struggles,

Luna Vachon is recommended to burgeoning indie promotion ECW

by her longtime friend Nancy Sullivan, aka Woman.

The ECW fans really embraced Luna.

They had a way of seeing

through the imposters

and spotting the real deals.

And they saw in her somebody they could invest in emotionally,

who could mix it up with the guys.

And no one doubted that she could kick Stevie Richards' ass.

And here comes Luna!

She was the queen of extreme,

that was no bullshit.

She was in her element.

And Richards, face-first into the steel again.

And Luna's loving it!

She had fun being a woman versus a man in the cage, being the first.

She liked being the first at a lot of things

and pushing the barriers and stuff like that.

Comes down across Richards!

One, two, and Luna makes history!

Winning the first ever intergender cage match!

I loved teaming up with Luna. There's a photo of us, like,

holding onto a steel cage and snarling.

She could go anywhere in the world and entertain.

And she could hold her own with anyone.

And I'm including the men when I say anyone.

The bitch is back!

She's a devil in disguise!

In the late '90s, the WWF's shift to increasingly provocative storylines

would see Luna Vachon as a perfect addition to the roster,

and she eventually rejoins the company.

However, she's once again assigned

a supporting role.

Now, just to have women

as valets and stuff like that and being stifled,

and not being able to work, it would piss me off.

You'd want to wrestle when you're a wrestler, right?

While Luna's pairing with Goldust

eventually leads her back into the ring,

she clashes with the WWF's new direction for women's wrestling.

To make matters worse, Luna is set to lose a high-profile match

to Sable, a model groomed

for wrestling superstardom

who has no experience in the ring.

Luna! You little bitch!

She said, "I don't have to learn to take bumps,

because Vince has told me

I'm going to be the women's champion."

-Shut up, I'm reading. -The way my psyche felt

at that point, knowing the dues I had paid,

how my family stopped talking to me

because I wanted to be a lady in this business...

My children were growing up without me. I was growing up without them.

All for wrestling. It tore me apart.

Sable wasn't a wrestler. And Sable was a beautiful woman.

She probably still is, I don't know.

She didn't want to walk around with a scar,

or a bruise, or anything like that.

That wasn't her gimmick.

At WrestleMania XIV,

Luna succeeds in making Sable appear

as a future women's champion.

And now let's get it on!

-Look at that takedown! -Here they go!

Now, we're talking WrestleMania.

This is the Super Bowl of wrestling.

I was told by Vince McMahon,

if I bruised or scratched her, I would be fired.

She's pulling hair! No fair, she's cheating!

There's an enormous amount of pressure that goes into

having a match with somebody who is relatively inexperienced.

-No way! -Powerbomb!

Sable powerbombed Luna!

And so, when you take a veteran like Luna, you are basically saying,

"We trust you to make this person look the very best they can."

Sable with a TKO!

-Unbelievable! -She gets her through the match.

And Luna's, like, super stoked that she got her through,

happy for the girl, you know, come back and she's happy for her.

Luna comes back in, and she sees Vince McMahon and they're clapping.

She thinks they're clapping at her and saying,

"Great job, gal, you did it, you get it!"

They were looking over, it was Sable behind 'em.

I passed by and nobody said

"thank you," "kiss my ass" or "suck my dick."

I tried talking to her. "What's wrong?"

She just broke down in tears. "Nobody appreciates what I did."

It hurt her. She wanted to be acknowledged

for being something other than strange,

for what she could do in the ring.

And on that night, we call it the grandest stage of them all,

they had this barn burner of a match

and it really hurt her that she was not...

noticed for it.

Sunny came to Luna. And I think Sunny came to Luna in a nice--

"Don't worry about it." She's like... So she... "Get away from me!"

Sunny wouldn't get away from her, so she just came up,

put her into a production box and just kept hitting her

on top of it, saying, "I'm not punching her face."

She knew if she hit Sunny in the face, she'd be fired.

Poor Sunny never knew what hit her, yeah. It was kind of crazy.

But it was just Luna being really hurt

-and lashing out. -Nobody talked about mental health.

But, like, at the same time, that was her gimmick, too.

So, like, was it a show? I can tell you it wasn't.

I think it was all the same. There was no line.

It was blurred lines, you know. Luna, Angel, Trudy, Mom.

No one spoke about that shit.

You know what I mean? About people's mental illness or whatever.

They saw and they were scared, and they just didn't. That was it.

Her just being not accepted

in this business, to a level where she thought she deserved it

because... 'cause of her skills as a worker,

and what she brought to this business.

Let's meet our contestants,

in the first ever Miss Rumble 2000 contest!

WWF's creative direction for women's wrestling

is increasingly at odds

with Luna's desire to showcase her in-ring prowess,

making a final showdown with CEO Vince McMahon inevitable.

When the Attitude Era started, it was just all sexuality.

I couldn't believe Luna was putting up with that shit.

'Cause she was so old-school like me.

She definitely felt pressured. She didn't feel pretty, you know.

Now that you got models around you, it can't feel good.

Did she say, "Come get it"?

They'll start hitting that pause button.

They wanted Luna to take her top off. She said, "You spent years

making me ugly, and now you ask"--

And she stood up to Vince in front of everybody.

I guess what you see is what you get, okay.

My opinion? I don't know.

They didn't fire her out and out for refusing, standing up to him.

They waited a week or two and used it as the excuse to fire her.

After a number of backstage incidents

and escalating erratic behavior,

Luna is released from the WWF for the final time.

Dare to be different.

Dare to have the balls

to do the gimmick that I do and...

And rip my vocal chords

until I don't sound like a female.

Just would take a bullet for Vince McMahon,

take a train hitting me for Vince McMahon.

And it had nothing to do with the money, it didn't,

it just has to do with me really caring about this business

and caring about women in this business and seeing that,

wanting it to be different.

When she got fired, we came home.

She goes, "I'm in the bedroom, vampire."

I shook my head and laughed when I seen this.

In cocaine, she had written out,

"Fuck you, Vince." She goes, "Watch!"

She just started-- So I'm like, "Oh!" And it was just downhill after that.

I mean, an easy night, an easy-going night, could be,

I don't know, couple eight balls, 10 hits of ecstasy.

Something like that.

I didn't understand her need to... Gotta have more, gotta have-- Like--

"I gotta get more, let's get more." I'd be like, "No!" You know?

That's ultimately what drove us apart.

He was smart enough to get out.

That's how bad it was, yes. I remember him telling me that.

Said he didn't have a choice. He had to.

-Or they'd both be dead. -When we'd talk, she'd talk about

getting back together sometimes. I said, "We can't."

So, what I did is, I ran away as far as I could to California.

Unfortunately, I got married and it wasn't the right thing to do.

Like, just went and did everything I could not to come back.

She was in a lull, and she was, like, trying to be normal.

She wasn't wrestling. She was a waitress.

And there was a time Luna showed up at my house.

She is beating on the door.

I open the door, she runs past me, and she's got a gun.

I don't know where she got the gun. "Is somebody chasing you? What"--

She's talking crazy. I had to get the gun away from her.

And I still never knew what happened. But she was frantic

and crazy, so I could never have anything like that around my kids.

I was like, "Luna, you know,

I got these kids and, I mean, I'm not gonna beat around the bush."

I said, "I can't. You're not stable enough."

Then I was like, "It's just not gonna work."

She wasn't in control

of her entire life.

And so, there's this real feeling

of gratification that comes from being able to hold a crowd

-in the palm of your hand. -Luna's sick! She's going up top.

Like, maybe you don't have it all together

the other 23 hours and 45 minutes of the day, but for that 15 minutes

you're in the ring, you are completely in control.

And that's a powerful feeling.

The biggest challenge that all of us who love it face

is trying to find something

that makes us feel the way we felt when we were in the ring.

And I don't know if Luna ever found that thing.

How did your relationship with your mom change after wrestling?

We didn't talk that much, 'cause I was in culinary school.

I was in Texas, she was in Florida.

I remember her driving a tow truck.

She was hanging out with bikers, outlaw bikers. I don't know why.

She never met my daughter. I don't think

she thought she was good enough. And that's that mental illness.

I talked to Luna for a final time just a few weeks before she left us.

I was so surprised because she told me she was in a good place.

It came as a shock.

How did you find out she passed away?

I was flying to do a chef dinner in Ohio, from Connecticut.

And my grandma called and said

that my mom had--

She had just found my mom dead.

That had to have been a rough time for her.

You never want to see your kids, you know, die before you do.

I heard she choked, but then I also heard it was a overdose.

The wrong mix of things.

It could have been either one, honestly, I don't really care.

She's not here anymore, that sucks.

You know, I don't really care how she died.

On August 27th, 2010, Luna Vachon's battles

with addiction and mental illness finally come to an end.

You know...

the thing is to really love people

and understand them while they are alive.

Nobody survives this world.

We've lost so many people in this business.

Not just from drugs and pills and steroids,

but, I mean, from mental health, from just... I truly believe

that there could have been a lot of help, for a lot of...

talent in our business.

We need to do better, as an industry.

I remember just my heart aching.

You know, I was really hurting. I really adored her.

I thought that her family and her fans would appreciate

a eulogy of sorts.

And so, I'd like to read this a little bit, if I could.

I said, "'In a world full of butterflies,

it took balls to be a caterpillar.'

I love that quote from Luna, and in a way, I can't help but hope

that this life was but a chrysalis of sorts for her, that for a woman

who never seemed completely comfortable in her own skin,

this life was just a prelude to becoming the beautiful butterfly

God always meant for her to be.

But that would be too easy and so anti-Luna.

There are enough beautiful butterflies out there already.

Maybe we should appreciate the beauty of the caterpillar

without needing or wanting it to change for our viewing pleasure.

Maybe Luna was perfect just as she was.

Maybe she was exactly who she was supposed to be."

She never thought she was pretty enough to be a wrestler.

Her eyes, they're green. She had beautiful eyes.

If you looked into 'em. But people just seen Luna!

They see this character and this persona.

They never seen Trudy or Angelle or looked in there

and seen the innocence in there,

the innocence lost. People say, "How did you stay together so long?"

I go, "If you want me to be honest,

I was worried nobody else could take care of her."

I love her, but should we have been together that long? No.

Were we self-destructive and explosive and everything? Yes.

But I feel a lot of guilt for her passing, you know.

And, like, I feel like I wasn't there

to take care of her. Maybe it was selfish.

It probably was, but I don't think we both were gonna make it.

We would have both ended up in a dark fate.

And I'm sorry, you know, tell her sorry for that too 'cause I miss her.

You know, I'm sorry for being selfish like that.

You know, to not have a funeral, I think that was

one of the hardest things for me to accept.

When Luna passed, if it was Luna's choice, she would have had, like,

a team of Harley-Davidsons pulling down the streets of Tampa

with her casket.

And, you know, firecrackers and fireworks

and sparklers shooting out of it, and everybody would know.

You know, they were all gonna come see her final hurrah.

No, she wouldn't have wanted that.

That's not her style. She was private.

She wanted to be left alone. She was good.

Any regrets?

I wish that I woulda changed things

for women more.

I regret that I gave up my family

and didn't get what I wanted the most,

and that was the WWF women's title,

which, I guess, basically,

isn't all that I thought it was.

Luna would have loved today's women's wrestling environment.

She would've loved the physicality.

Thrown out of this! Through a table!

She would have loved that she would get to work

with some of the best wrestlers in the world on a nightly basis.

Yeah, I think she'd be really happy to know

how far women's wrestling has come.

-Well, boom! Beautiful... -She was such a colorful character.

She added so much to everything she was part of.

-And she was great in the ring. -There's nobody like her.

She was original, that's for sure.

If Luna were here today

and she was talking to you,

like, if she was behind my shoulder with her hands on my shoulder,

she would look into the camera and go,

"What the fuck's wrong with you?

Why did you wait 'til I was fucking dead

before you did anything about me?

I should've had this done when I was alive.

You could've come over and talked to me.

You wouldn't have this little bitch imitating me."

That's what she would have said.