Meet the Real Ladies of “Glow”
In celebration of Netflix’s Glow, we have dug up an old favorite, a feature from our December 1989 issue on the world of women’s wrestling. Yes, a few actual GLOW-ers show up, but as you can see, women’s wrestling is as colorful, vast and wild as the show has suggested.
Pow! Thwack! “#&@ing witch!” Whump! “Wimpette!” Bash! “Nobody twists my nose off!” Whammo!
Welcome, fans, to the wild world of Championship Wrestling, Women’s Division—sugar ‘n’ spice and everything in a vise. Hammer locks, drop kicks, death grips, flying scissors and now and then a punt to the privates. But feminine. Fans, don’t ever suggest to a lady wrestler that her career is less dainty than, say, day care. If you do, she will patiently explain that wrestling is simply one more career option for today’s woman while she grafts your elbow to your ear. “I’m pretty, I’m feminine and I’m tough,” says the American Wrestling Association’s “Magnificent” Mimi Lesseos. Mimi is only one of the dangerous damsels now starring for fem wrestling agencies: A.W.A., GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling), POWW (Powerful Women of Wrestling) and The American Angels offer a bevy of good girls to cheer (besides Mimi, there are Luscious Lisa, Precious, The Farmer’s Daughter, Bambi) and bad girls to boo (Palli the Terrorist, Sasha the Russian, Madusa, Queen Kong). The best and the baddest are here, in hard-hitting action and, for the first, soft focus.
Photography by Richard Fegley
Film shots courtesy of Sebastian Films — a Paramount release
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Luscious Lisa drops Magnificent Mimi in The American Angels, a Sebastian International Pictures film due from Paramount.
The battle between Magnificence and Lusciousness (Magnificent Mimi and Luscious Lisa, stars of The American Angels, are the rasslin’ hellions) continues. Mimi is 5’8″, 125 pounds and a European champ. Luscious Lisa, 5’3″, 98 pounds and a new to pro wrestling, trained for ten weeks with grappler Alex “The Medic” Knight. She “got bruised pretty bad” during filming, says co-producer Beverly Sebastian, “but she hung in there.”
Luscious Lisa in another brusier with Magnificent Mimi. “She’s a trouper,” Mimi says of Lisa. “She’s ballsy. I worked with her three months, and she got pretty good.”
Trudy Adams, “The Farmer’s Daughter.”
Donna Spangler, “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”
Farmer’s Daughter Trudy Adams gets the better of Coal Miner’s Daughter Donna Spangler, who just happens to be Trudy’s cousin.
Trudy initiated her cousin in the rigors of pro wrestling. Donna avoided the trials of a lady wrestler’s apprenticeship.
“When I was starting out in Las Vegas,” says Trudy, “these bad girls brought a blowtorch into the ring and set my pigtails on fire.” But in fem wrestling, the good girls always win.
