Original subtitles

Now I understand you had a rough match last night.

Ah, you wrestled a lady, and she got 14 stitches.

Yeah, well...

If that's what it takes to try to win,

that's what I'll do.

[cheering]

You can't say "women's wrestling"

without thinking The Fabulous Moolah.

If she had not run the women's wrestling business,

there may not have been women's wrestling.

Introducing, first, to my right,

former World Women's Champion...

The Fabulous Moolah!

[cheering]

As Moolah, the promoter, I want to make money

for my talent and I want to make money for Moolah.

[cheering]

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 in wrestling.

She was also a manipulator, and she was also a thief.

She wanted to hurt me... Bruise me...

[shouting]

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 stand up and 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.

[bell chimes]

♪

[match bell chimes]

...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 really never 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. [laughs]

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. As you can see,

how beautiful it is - sparkly, just like Moolah liked it.

- [laughs] - 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,

so I've got these big posters that would say,

"The Fabulous Moolah Champion vs.

Dynamite Dixie Majors".

I had this life-size doll, and I'd take that doll and

I would body slam it, and climb up on the bed,

and drop an elbow.

I'd stand in front of the mirror with my hairbrush,

do little interviews and tell Moolah

how I was gonna come and wrestle her.

As you can tell, I like the, the bad guys, the heels.

She was a heel. She played that part.

My name's The Fabulous Moolah.

I've been wrestling since I was 15 years old,

and I am the world's champion lady wrestler.

They hated her, but that's what she wanted.

She's nasty and she cheats!

[shouting]

Oh, I'd fix up a little spoon handle, you know,

about the size of your finger,

roll it up with tape and put it down in my bra.

The meaner she was, the more they liked it, you know.

And she loved being a heel.

Stick it in their eyes, in the throat.

Ha!

The Fabulous Moolah started as a female wrestler,

and then she became the female wrestling champion,

and then she became the booker of all the girl wrestlers.

I first broke into wrestling as a photographer.

I was a 15-year-old kid and I was doing all of the

photography that was sold in the arenas for the entire

Memphis wrestling territory.

"Moolah, can I get a couple of pictures for the magazine?"

Always say for the magazines, right.

"Why of course you can, darling."

And she had her stock poses. Boom, boom, boom,

and 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 actually banned in Madison Square Garden,

and Moolah was the one that was chosen to break the ban.

She was the featured girl in the

first girl's match in the Garden.

Now that she's almost 60, she's on MTV.

It's 1984, the Rock 'n' Wrestling Connection.

Cyndi Lauper and that whole era of network TV,

and Madison Square Garden, and 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,

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'll never be anyone to have the,

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 9, I think.

And then, it was her dad and her brothers that 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.

She 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,

and she just had a natural flair for, for wrestling.

But behind the scenes, Billy Wolfe,

Mildred Burke's husband, was pulling the strings and

managing the whole women's troop,

for good and bad.

When she was 17 or 18, she went to see Billy Wolfe.

When you became a wrestler for Billy Wolfe,

you automatically had to... go to bed with him.

She said she wasn't doing it,

and she could find some other way to wrestle without

having to go to bed with him or anyone else.

What's the worst experience you,

you might want to say that, like,

you ever had with a promoter?

[laughs] That's kind of hard to talk about.

- Really is. - Hm.

The Fabulous Moolah, at one point,

was married to a guy named Buddy Lee.

Buddy Lee used to wrestle.

Of course, they met and they 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 own stable; they took all the bookings.

And more importantly, a booking fee

out of all of the girls' pay.

You knew right off the bat why she got in the business

and why she wanted to be a star:

she loved money. [laughs]

♪

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,

that they were going to honor The Fabulous Moolah

by having The Fabulous Moolah Memorial Battle Royal.

I thought it was very nice that they would name it after her.

Keeping her legacy going.

2 or 3 days later, that'd all been taken away.

Let's talk about The Fabulous Moolah controversy.

I think it's a bunch of bull.

I really think it's a bunch of 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 was alleged,

we gotta say that. It's alleged.

Grossed out about it. Name it something else.

It's not hard. Scrap it.

♪

Stories started coming out on the internet,

Fabulous Moolah, suddenly, was a horrible person

who took advantage of all these women,

and pimped 'em out, and fed 'em drugs,

and all this stuff.

They contacted the sponsors and 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 of the girls have said no.

I think that it was ignorant canceling The Fabulous Moolah

Memorial Battle Royal because I interviewed

over 20 women, and they all said the same thing:

"There's no truth to those rumors."

♪

Accusations about Moolah polarized the wrestling world.

They originated from an investigative newspaper story

that quoted serious allegations by the family

of one of her former wrestlers.

St. Mark, if you see these guys moving around,

they, they are a professional film company,

and they are doing an episode dealing with

pro women wrestlers...

which one of 'em was my mother, South Carolina's

first black female professional wrestler,

Sweet Georgia Brown.

[applause]

I'm Michael McCoy.

I'm Senior Pastor at St. Mark Baptist Church.

That article that came out in the Columbia Free Times,

it was about what my mother had to go through and endure

while she was in wrestling.

I started a search to try to find out the truth.

Maybe you could just 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 that I heard.

Do I know any truth to 'em?

No, I can't sit here and say I know truth to it or not.

But, you know, when more than 1, 2, 3 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? - How's it going?

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 by Moolah,

booked out by Moolah, and was controlled by,

by Moolah's group.

Can you tell us who Sweet Georgia Brown was?

Yeah, she was one of the, 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.

You know, it was like she had a purpose,

she wanted to be there.

The first time I seen her wrestling,

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 some KKKs.

She was thrown on the floor of the bus,

and she was scared for her life.

♪

She'd 'a had to have been super passionate because, see,

in 1964, she was ranked #4 in the world.

If she would 'a had the opportunity to fight for

the world's title, she probably would 'a won it,

but Moolah was most definitely 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 and she come back,

just about, she was pregnant.

One of my aunts said that, "Every time you come back home,

you come back home with one of these half,

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, we 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 other men.

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; that was it.

A lot of the girls went with him.

Georgia Brown was one of the girls that went with Buddy.

I started to search for my father, and then,

one of the first places where I started was

with The Fabulous 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 ever 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?"

And she said, "Well, his name is Buddy Lee."

He was kind of rough on the girls.

I think that happened with Sweet Georgia Brown,

that 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 in to look for anything and

I didn't want anything.

I just 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.

♪

The 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 [laughs] 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 they lived on the property and

Moolah presided over it like a mother lion.

She took girls from all walks of life,

and she brought 'em in, she taught 'em a skill.

She put it together like a group or a union and

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 at that point and

you wanted to get booked, you pretty much had to

go through Moolah or you weren't gonna work.

♪

- I have a bunch of questions. - Okay.

I took my truth serum before I came in.

Okay. [laughs]

My name is Wendi Richter.

Wendi Richter!

I was a professional wrestler for over 20 years.

The first time I ever 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 2 weeks.

My name's Victoria Otis.

I wrestled as Princess Victoria...

...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 about a year,

and I was told by my promoter,

"Look, I've done all I can do.

I've tried to get you booked other places.

The only way I can get you booked is

I gotta send you to Moolah."

I still remember a friend of mine telling me,

"Vickie," he said, "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.

♪

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 come from a hard background too,

and she was a wrestler, and she lived

in the house with Moo, and she called her Ma.

And 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 out to the pond and go fishing,

then I come in there and drop a 6-pack in the pond,

and her and I'd sit there and drink beer. [laughs]

I was famous for getting the beer on the property. [laughs]

♪

They had apartments.

And she would put 2 or 3 girls in there at a time,

and they would 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 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, 4 girls in one little house,

she's getting $1200 a month? In the 80s!

And on top of that, she's taking 25% off of

what she's telling us we're paid.

Bull puggy.

I'm sitting here 24 hours a day,

making your connections with the promoters.

All you got to do is sit your lazy butt in the car

and go to wrestle, and collect their money and

send me 25%. And I thought that was...

that was fair.

♪

There's a picture of me in this brown outfit that

Moolah presented to me at Christmas in front of

all the girls, after she had given all of them

a 5, or $10 gift.

That was no cheap outfit. That was hand-beaded.

That was a 2 to $300 outfit. She couldn't take me in

privately and give me this outfit,

she had to do it 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.

I know it was the first or second week in September 1984.

- [dogs barking] - A girl...

Shut up!

[sighs] Um...

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, but I'm back at Moolah's property

and Moolah's walking me out to the ring.

She said, "I want to 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 pay day."

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.

[sighs] The conversation after I hung up from him,

with Moo was, "You know, hon,

the nicer you are to him, the bigger your pay day'll be,

and you could really use a pay day."

Producer: And so, was Moolah sort of 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 at the airport,

I said, "Damn, this guy didn't get beat by the ugly stick,

he got beat by the whole damn forest."

♪ [suspenseful]

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!"

Well, not a week after I got back is when Moo came to me

and said, "Look, you can't wrestle and I need my rent.

I'll take that yellow outfit, I'll take the brown outfit,"

that 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. [sighs]

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.

For God sakes, she couldn't tell 'em that I broke my neck and I,

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.

Do you have an assumption as to why there was

so much friction between you and Moolah?

The only thing I can think of why there was 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 that

I didn't want to live there anymore and

I 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, THEY WANNA HAVE FUN ♪

Cyndi Lauper was on an airplane flight with Lou Albano.

And then, Lou Albano tells everyone that

he was managing Cyndi Lauper. [laughs]

I created and made Cyndi Lauper.

Took her from a nothing.

I don't know if anybody knows it, but when she did

"Girls Just Want to Have Fun," he was in it.

That's how all of 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.

Whoo, I'm happy!

And Cyndi Lauper chose me.

Moolah may have the World's Championship Belt,

but she also has Lou Albano on her side.

Oh, Lou. [laughs]

As soon as Cyndi Lauper got involved with Lou Albano,

Vince McMahon saw gold and fostered that connection

into The Rock 'n' Wrestling Connection.

- Happy New Year! - At MTV!

The wrestlers giving their hand at it.

They have been involved with rock 'n' roll in the past year.

It brought the dated look of wrestling into the main stream.

Wendi Richter morphed from the Dallas cowgirl to,

Wendi Richter, a little bit more Cyndi Lauper-ish,

little more rock 'n' roll, and that's what led the

MTV movement there in 1984 that pretty much

paved the way for the first WrestleMania.

They were giving girls more of a push than

they probably ever had before.

They were really trying to escalate the girls up,

trying 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 would be so he had a male role model and

a female role model.

Since the most widely recognized female champion

of the previous 30 years had been The Fabulous Moolah,

Wendi needed to beat Moolah for the title.

Well, with that in mind, ladies and gentlemen,

we'd like to introduce to you the number one contender

for the ladies championship, Miss Wendi Richter.

And the rest is history.

Ladies and gentlemen, this title belt will be on the line

at Madison Square Garden just 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 jealous and guarded of

that championship for a long time,

but Vince was able to write the appropriate amount of

money on a check and, that changed Moolah's mind.

And also, by doing that,

Moolah got Vince McMahon Jr's loyalty for life.

- 1, 2... - [match bell]

That's when everything changed.

The winner of this title and new World Women's Champion!

Wendi Richter!

- [cheering] - 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 'cause they wanted

to see Wendi win, right.

But it was a bigger deal inside the business because

two generations of wrestlers had come and gone

without ever seeing The Fabulous Moolah lose.

It was shocking to the folks in the business who knew

about the stranglehold that Moolah had had on the thing.

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.

And, 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 'em what you got!

[laughs] 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 though.

[cheering]

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, he had been pushing Wendi Richter,

gonna make her a superstar, she possibly was getting

too big for her britches.

He decided that she needed to lose the belt,

and 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 - with that, you never go all the way back

'cause 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 really 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...

♪

She didn't understand why Moolah was there.

I'd wrestled the Spider Lady before and

I didn't recall her being that size.

A very determined young lady.

Gonna take one heck of a wrestler to be able 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, "1," I kicked out,

had my shoulder up.

[claps] "2, 3."

♪

- And that was it. - [match bell]

What was that?

It appears that the referee has made a 3-count.

- [match bell] - The match was over.

Then, the masked person...

took their mask off...

And it was Moolah.

- It is Moolah! - [cheering]

It is Moolah! Take a look, kids!

Fabulous Moolah, the oldest, saltiest dog in the yard

that knows all the tricks, she was the one

that was chosen because it was thought that

if things did break down,

that she could handle Wendi legitimately anyway.

Did you have any idea that, that was Moolah...

- Mm-mm. - ...In the match, at all?

No. I couldn't tell who it was.

[crowd chanting] 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 story line.

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 like $1 million at that time.

Her and Cyndi Lauper, and the cartoon, The Goonies...

You know, 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 maybe 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; that 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,

I 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?

[sighs] 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. [laughs] 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 story lines.

But Moolah showed no sign of slowing down.

She teamed up with fellow wrestling legend Mae Young.

Mae Young wrestled in 7 different decades.

She was tougher than Moolah, and that's saying something.

Years ago, they, 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.

Or, maybe the Addams family's grandmother.

I have to be real careful with her.

Everywhere I go, she either wants to get drunk or naked.

This would be the place, I guess.

[laughs]

And then, of course, they go out on TV and

they can take the tremendous bumps and incredible falls,

and still somehow not break into a million pieces.

Ah! 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.

- [dog growling] - No, no, stop.

- Stop. Scooter, stop it. - [barks, growls]

Stop. Sh.

I get the last word, not you. Be a good boy.

What was her funeral like?

It was crowded and I don't-- I'll 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.

The wrestling families showed up in large numbers

to pay their respects.

This is where she's buried. This is hers here.

And this is Katie's and this was Johnnie Mae's here.

She had that little thing put there.

She said, "When you wanna come talk to me,

there's a bench in there.

You won't get wet if it's raining."

[sighs] 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 would have been possible without the rise of

women in mixed martial arts, and 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.

10 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 you worked for somebody and they 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 mean, I'll be honest with you,

Bambi was never a famous wrestler. But...

if there's one thing that I could do,

it would be to save Moolah's name and legacy,

and restore what she gave

to the professional wrestling business.

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.

She's not as big a star as Ronda Rousey,

but she was the placeholder for 30 years.

How do you think people should,

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 they wouldn't have had the

career they had, without her.

Whoever's 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.