Original subtitles

Stay forth. I will haunt your very breath.

I will be your shadow in the darkness.

Hailing from wrestling royalty, Luna Vashon emerged as one of the squared

circle's most unhinged and most unforgettable characters. When you saw

were seeing a monster come to life.

crazy, wild, botanic.

Despite being consistently marginalized by a

male -dominated industry, Luna was driven to push boundaries and redefine

women's wrestling.

My mom was a bad girl.

Being far in an alley would want to run away.

Her

volatile

persona sprang from a traumatic upbringing and a string of personal

don't think it was a very easy childhood.

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

She was a pretty young girl. They took advantage of her. While working

some of wrestling's top stars, her battles with addiction and mental health

became all -consuming.

She gets her credit.

That's some serious shit.

She would go from like, oh, thank you so much. Oh, that's so sweet. What are you

doing? What are you talking about?

Of course she was self -medicating.

Dipping 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 this guy?

This is destruction. A cameraman just got knocked down.

Betrayed by the world she adored, one final act of defiance would ignite her

self -destruction. She stood up to vent in front of everybody. She didn't want

to just be booed. She wanted to be a wrestler.

That was it. That was enough.

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

know, up in flames you go.

There are two ways to thrive easily through life.

One way to believe everything.

Others that doubt it.

Luna Vachon and the Black Heart.

I used to always think wrestling was real.

Like, when you're a kid, you think it's real.

Like, that's what she always was to me.

She was always Luna.

Hi, my name is Van Heard, 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. Like, 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 definitely believe she loved wrestling more than she loved anything in life.

Her passion truly was professional wrestling. Anything she's ever spoke to

about in her deeper dark hours was pro wrestling.

I'm David Heath, better known as Gang Girl. I've been a professional wrestler

for 34 years.

The first time I met Luna Vachon was at a Florida Championship Wrestling show.

She came in. She kicked the door open. She hollers in, fresh meat. She points

me. I look around. I'm the only one there.

And then she just slams the door and walks out. Now, you got a picture. This

a girl with a little mohawk, blood all out of her nose. Her tongue's like, ah.

You know, she's growling at me. So I was terrified.

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

But we became friends, so much so that we said, I would never date you. I would

never go out with somebody like you. She says, I would never go out with

somebody like you either. And I go, good, I'm glad we agree on that. And I

know, somewhere across the line.

There's many faces to my mom.

Her real name was Gertrude, and she used to, like, tell me nightmare stories

about how she had to stand in front of class and tell everybody her name was

Gertrude. And then 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.

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. So Butcher Paul Vachon had his moments.

My name is Paul.

Luna's origins with the Vachon family are rooted in a chance encounter

a harrowing tragedy on December 18th, 1966.

And I heard a gunshot.

And at first, I opened the door, looked around, couldn't see anything.

So I went back to sleep.

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

And she said, the man that owned this motel shot himself.

He was my husband.

And I met her daughter, who was then four years old, who became

my daughter because I married the widow to Luna. I was the only

father she ever knew.

Adopted into the Vashon 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 grew up going on the road and cleaning up the dressing room floor and helping

her put the curlers in her hair. And that's all I wanted to do. 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 is Janine Mioset. I used to be known as Mad Maxine or Lady Maxine.

Well, I'm 6 '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 protege of the fabulous Moolah. To train at Moolah's was like

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 the teenage Luna, whose

sweet demeanor is worlds away from her alter ego.

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

And when you would say, you should be a baby face, she would get so mad because

all she ever wanted was to be like badass heel.

I had a strong sense of trepidation because what I saw going on.

At this camp, the young, underage trainees, the little lambs, as I think

them, you know, the naive young women who thought they could trust Moolah,

thought she was like a mother figure, but then she would take advantage.

I've never really seen her afraid of anybody, but I know when Moolah would

into a room, she would just shake and be super nervous and scared, like they've

been beaten or something like that. So I know Moolah held a lot of power over

her.

Moola would say something like, you're sleeping with me tonight, hon, or

something like that.

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

She said that Moola had sent her out to this guy in the West, and

the guy said he'd pay her $500 to take a photograph.

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's going to do that to a 16 -year

girl. It's just, it was appalling.

But she said, you know, Moolah's the only show in town. You've got to train

her if you want to make it in the business.

Every girl that trained with her has a Moolah story of some sort.

My name is Kim Sachs. 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 city 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,

and nobody had really seen anything like that. But 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

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, and all of a sudden she turned into

Luna. You know, he was... considered crazy and crazy and lunatic, but

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 with the fans in a way that was just

monstrous.

You know, 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. It's basically what everyone said

back then. If my memory serves me correctly, it was like Quaaludes and

acid.

She pushed every boundary she could come across.

How can you take 100 pills a day? How do you even get 100 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 to the best of

her ability.

I don't think it was a very easy childhood with her having her restless

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

that. I believe there was 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 kind of basically

left it at that.

She didn't want people to know that.

Like a little girl can idolize. You want to do something, and you want to be

like somebody, you idolize something, and people will use that against you,

I think that very much happened to her. I wasn't there, so I didn't see it, but

with my heart, I believe some of it, and I think probably set the path of the

course for some of the...

self -destruction later on in life, 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 know

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 Emory University since she was two years

old for depression and being bipolar and schizophrenia and stuff like that,

so... It was a roller coaster, hooptie -hoops and loopie -loops. Luna has this

persona of being tough badass, but really, she was like the shyest person

room. A lot of people call her Angele, or I call her Angele.

I think that's what her dad would call her, because she hated Gertrude or

you know?

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

If she changed, she'd be some other personality.

There was like Angel, Trudy, Angele, you know?

And 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 all of a sudden, 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.

You know, 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 got to go wrestle.

Even no matter how mad you get, somebody can hold you and say, okay, you got to

stop. And you couldn't do that with her.

She would always 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 Dickie wasn't the best situation.

Dirty Dick Slater.

I hear they call you Filthy Richard in parts unknown, but that's another story.

That was 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 with bruises after the fact.

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

And when they split up, you know, I was like, okay, good.

You know, that's something that's out of her life.

So I met her at Florida Championship Wrestling.

Terrified this woman.

Swore her off. Bloody no.

Scared to death. Fresh meat.

So next thing you know, I'm tagging with a fellow named Tom Nash. We're doing a

Blackheart thing. It turns out that Tom knew her from school. So then down the

road, a month or two or down the road or something, he goes, hey, Luna called

and she wants to go down to training with us. And I'm like, no, I don't want

anything to do with her. But still, I don't know why.

Whatever. The forces of the universe, the nature, whatever.

We get in there. She's in the backseat. He's sitting over here. I'm driving.

And then she crawls over and she starts hitting me.

Like, why don't you like me? Why don't you like me? And she's like, she rips my

shirt off. And so I get to the house. The fellow's name's Rusty Brooks. He had

ring in his backyard.

And out of nowhere, 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 mean, I'm like trying to reach. She's locked in there. So I end

diving through the ropes, which breaks her off me. I got her against this tree.

He's like, no, hey, that's Dick Slater's girl.

I go, she's crazy. She's bit me.

With Luna as their manager, Tom Nash and David Heath become fixtures on the

independent wrestling circuit as the Blackhearts.

Tom had a big crush on

her. And the next thing you know, like...

They were married.

Daughter, he did. He had a daughter, and he did love her. 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.

So that's some shady shit right there.

They got in a few fights, and then 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, and then he swung on me,

and then I snapped.

I feel really bad. I puked in the bathroom the next day at the airport

saw what I could do to somebody.

The fallout from the fight breaks up the Blackhearts, and 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 that's just blown

in the wind?

If you pick it and you cage it, it's going to die, you know?

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

She was a beautiful person, and she had a lot, a lot of love in her. She just

wanted to be loved and was so misunderstood, you know, so.

So where was the wedding?

It was great. It was through the Halloween, so I wrestled a steel cage

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.

Put it on my drinking hand, so.

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

The newlyweds performed 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 from Puerto Rico that had me and her in it, and then

she got hired. And I'm not going to lie, I was like jealous and stuff like that.

I was like, aw, 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

stage, WrestleMania.

You're watching WrestleMania, and all of a sudden your mom's coming out with

Shawn Michaels, and they're in Caesar's Palace, they're outside, and then her

and Sherry Martel get into it.

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 is called WWF Raw.

We got that whole console just for that game.

And I, Luna Bison, I will be the goddess of the

square circle.

All you're doing is trying to make it as a wrestler. And then if you put in all

the extracurriculars, like the drugs, the depression and the bipolar, it just

keeps, it fades, it's run into days, it keeps going fast. Next thing you know,

it's gone.

After 15 years of self -sacrifice and struggling in the independent

Luna Vachon finally reaches the pinnacle of the wrestling world. 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 girls didn't have children. A lot of the girls did not have children

because, or they had them very late after their careers were over.

Because, I mean, you can't. She lived in this little pink 1950s trailer that had

like this porch addition to it.

I knocked on her door, and she had obviously been crying. Her eyes were all

swollen. And I asked her what was wrong, and she said it was one of her son's

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

-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 ballet savvy.

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 Debra. Otherwise, my wrestling fans know me as Medusa.

There really wasn't a women's division.

There wasn't anything they did really 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 freaking paper or the marquee? And it

-da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da, and more.

We were and more half the time.

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

The thing has always been the girls have to work 100 % harder to just get 10 %

of the recognition.

90 % 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

got to be a smart ass.

And, you know, Luna would go around going, Mike is bigger than you.

You know, 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

belt to you.

She was like, I can't do that, man. I can't. I said, yeah, I'm going to drop

belt. What are they going to do?

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, let's go. When we go home, we go bada -bing, bada -boom,

the comeback.

Quick, you know, roll me at one, two, three.

She goes, are you serious? You'd do that for me? I said, yes, let's do it.

I will lay down and give you the belt.

And she just, like, lost it. 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, just do it.

She wouldn't do it.

I tried.

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

Frustrated over the lack of opportunity for female wrestlers, Luna forges a bond

with Sherri Martell, another skilled wrestler downgraded to manager status.

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

I'm going to stand right by my man.

Sherry, let's go.

Yes, sir.

On her way.

Sensational Sherry. She loved Sherry. She loved Sherry to death.

They were friends. They traveled together.

They were as 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 plasters or anything like that.

So when I found out, like, she was taking these pills and they were sharing

that, I confronted her. It didn't go well.

I didn't think it was her darkest times. My personal opinion was she was out of

control, like, beyond, like, like, could have, you know, died. It was, like,

just that bad.

Luna could have 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, they said, it's for our own good. They were always worried

about her mental health. You know, they said it's for our own good.

Is there any positive stuff that you learned from growing up like this?

Yeah, don't do drugs.

For real.

She probably chose her extracurricular activity and is a drug because of

wanting just to forget.

And it's like a facade.

Sometimes you get so soaked up and just caught up into it all and you get lost.

And she always would try to kill herself.

She did it a couple times.

You ever see her wrist there? Big scars.

Weird. Like, 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

promotion ECW by her longtime friend Nancy Sullivan, a .k .a. Woman.

The ECW fans really embraced Luna. They had a way of seeing through the

imposters and spotting the real deals.

saw in her somebody that they could invest in emotionally, who could mix it

with the guys.

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

And here comes Luda.

She was the queen of extreme. That was no bullshit.

She was in her element.

And Richards face first into the steel again.

She had a lot of fun being a woman versus a man in a cage and being the

She liked being the first at a lot of things and pushing the barriers and

like that.

I

love

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

holding on to a steel cage and snarling. She could go anywhere in the world, and

she could entertain, and she could hold her own with anyone, and I'm including

the men when I say anyone.

In the late 90s, the WWF's shift to

increasingly provocative storylines would see Luna Vachon as a perfect

to the roster, and she eventually rejoins the company.

However, she's once again assigned a supporting role.

Now, just to have women in valets and stuff like that 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,

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 had stopped talking to me because

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. I mean, she probably still is. I don't know.

But, you know, she didn't want to walk around with a scratch or a scar or a

bruise or anything like that. That wasn't what her gimmick was.

At WrestleMania 14, Luna succeeds in making Fable appear as a future women's

champion. And now let's get it on.

Fable, let's take that. Here we go.

Now we're talking WrestleMania. This is the Super Bowl of wrestling.

I was told by Vince McMahon, by Bruce, you're scratch driving people.

There's an enormous amount of pressure that goes into having a match with

somebody who is relatively inexperienced.

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.

She gets through the match and everything.

And Luna's, like, super stoked that she got it through, happy for the girl, you

know, come back happy for her.

Luna comes back in, and she sees a man there, and they're clapping. She thinks

that they're clapping at her and telling her, great job, gal, you did it, you

get it.

They were looking over. It was Sable behind them.

I passed by, and nobody said thank you, kissed my ass, or sucked my dick.

You know, I tried talking to her, I don't know what's wrong, and she just

down in tears.

Nobody appreciates what I did. It hurt her. You know, she wanted to be

acknowledged for being something other than strange.

She wanted to be acknowledged for what she could do in the ring. And on that

night, you know, 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.

Sonny came to Luna. And I think Sonny came to Luna in a nice way. She was

oh, don't worry about it. And she's like, ah.

She said, get away from me. And then Sonny wouldn't get away from her. So I

remember she just came up through her box and put her into a production box

just kept hitting her on top of the head saying, I'm not punching her face. I'm

not punching her face.

Because she knew if she hit Sonny in the face, she'd be fired.

Poor Sonny 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, it wasn't 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

deserved it because of her skills and as a worker and what she brought

to this business.

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

Vince McMahon inevitable.

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

I couldn't believe even Luna was putting up with that shit, really, because she

was so old school like me.

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

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

They want a lunar to take her top off. And she said, you spent all these years

making me ugly and be ugly. And now you're asking me to, and she's, she's

up the vents in front of everybody. I guess what you see is what you get.

Okay.

You're asking my opinion. I don't know. They didn't fire out now for refusing to

take that off and standing up to him. I think it waited like a week or two. And

then they use that as the excuse to fire.

After a number of backstage incidents and escalating erratic behavior, Luna is

released from the WWF for the final time.

And it had nothing to do with the money. It just had 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, when we came home, she said, I'm in the bedroom, vampire.

I actually just shook my head and kind of laughed when I seen this. So cocaine,

she had written out, you, Vince.

And she goes, what?

And she just started like, I'm like, oh, and then it was just.

downhill after that.

I mean, an easy night, an easygoing night could be, I don't know, a couple

eight balls, ten hits of ecstasy.

Yeah.

I didn't understand her need to, like, got to have more, got to have, like, I

got to get more, let's go 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, yeah.

I remember him telling me that, that he didn't have a choice.

He had to.

Otherwise, they'd both be dead.

When we talked, she would talk about getting back together sometimes.

I said, we can't. So then I think 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

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 didn't she wasn't wrestling she was a waitress and there was a time

luna showed up at my house she like is beating on the door i opened the door

runs past me and she's got a gun in her hand i don't know where she got the gun

i don't know what you know is somebody chasing you what you know and she's just

talking crazy i had to get the gun away from her and and i still never knew what

happened but she was frantic and she was crazy you know 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 going to beat around the bush. I said, I can't.

You're not stable enough that I was like, it's just not going to work.

She wasn't in control of her entire life.

And so there's this real feeling of gratification that comes from being able

hold a crowd in the palm of your hand.

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 she left wrestling?

We didn't talk that much because 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 these bikers,

outlaw bikers. I don't know why.

She never even met my daughter because I don't think she thought she was good

enough. That's that mental illness, you know.

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 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 an overdose, the wrong mix

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 27, 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. You know, not just from drugs

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

was but a chrysalis of thoughts 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 be able to 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 with us. She never saw herself as

beautiful. If you look at her eyes, they're green. She had the most

eyes. If you looked into him, you know, but people just seen this loner. They

see this character and this, this persona, but they never seen Trudy or

or, you know, looked in there and seen the innocence. It's really in there. The

innocence lost.

People say, how did you stay together so long? And then.

And then I go, if you really want me to be honest, I was just worried nobody

else could even take care of her. I love her so much, but, like, 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

I wasn't there to take care of her. Like, you know, maybe it was selfish on

end. It probably was selfish, but I don't think we're both going to make it.

would have both ended up in a dark fate.

And I'm sorry. I'm totally sorry for that too because I miss her.

I'm sorry for being selfish like that.

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 going to 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?

Well, I wish that I would have 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 have

loved the physicality.

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.

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's original, that's for sure.

If Luna were here today and she was talking to you, like if she was behind

shoulder with her hands on my shoulder, she would look into the camera and go,

What the f*** is wrong with you?

Why did you wait till I was dead before you did anything about me? I should have

had this done when I was alive.

You could have come over and you could have talked to me. You wouldn't have

little bitch imitating me.

That's what she would have said.