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Post by Mid-Carder on Mar 7, 2015 5:43:35 GMT -5
I consider myself to be very knowledgeable about wrestling, but the Moolah stuff is a bit of a mystery to me. I know, obviously, about the Spider Lady incident, which could be chalked up to Moolah doing what was asked of her by her employer. What other incidents are there that make her such a controversial figure? I saw somebody in another thread refer to her as "ruining lives" which I've seen echoed elsewhere. Enlighten me a bit!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 7, 2015 5:52:19 GMT -5
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cait
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Post by cait on Mar 7, 2015 6:27:51 GMT -5
She booked and controlled the Women's title for decades. She would make sure any threat to her was banished from wrestling such was the strength of her influence with promoters across North America. She held back the growth of Women's Wrestling style wise as Moolah taught her trainers a style that Moolah liked and could keep up with. Pre-Moolah the in ring style as a lot more athletic and "Joshi" like.
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Post by Mid-Carder on Mar 7, 2015 6:43:47 GMT -5
Is any of the "pimp" stuff actually confirmed though?
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Mozenrath
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Post by Mozenrath on Mar 7, 2015 7:02:19 GMT -5
Is any of the "pimp" stuff actually confirmed though? Depends on what you mean by confirmed. Like, no one ever got into legal trouble for it, for a variety of reasons, but it also wasn't just a rumor in that I am almost positive people have gone on record about it. Mae, on the other hand, is seemingly a pretty cool person by most if not all accounts.
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Post by Wolf Hawkfield no1 NZ poster on Mar 7, 2015 7:05:31 GMT -5
Is any of the "pimp" stuff actually confirmed though? Both Luna and Sherri Martel hinted that she did some shandy shit but their claims have been challenged.
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Post by Martin: #TeamBella Treasurer on Mar 7, 2015 7:19:47 GMT -5
slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/2014/08/30/21908686.htmlA recent interview with Mad Maxine, the short lived WWE character managed by Moolah, and rumoured to be the next challenger to Wendi Richter, and was meant to be a character in Hulk Hogan's Rock n Wrestling cartoon. She admits she wasn't in the business for long, but the environment got too much for her, and has some things to say about Moolah pimping out girls, taking half of her pay etc.
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Post by Mid-Carder on Mar 7, 2015 7:23:23 GMT -5
Makes you wonder why Moolah wielded so much power in WWE. Being female, and especially in her era, I doubt WWF higher-ups cared enough about her to let her get away with stuff.
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Capt Lunatic
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Post by Capt Lunatic on Mar 7, 2015 7:27:13 GMT -5
It's mostly haters and has-beens making accusations against her. Just like her accomplishments, take them with a grain of salt.
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Post by Martin: #TeamBella Treasurer on Mar 7, 2015 7:38:36 GMT -5
Makes you wonder why Moolah wielded so much power in WWE. Being female, and especially in her era, I doubt WWF higher-ups cared enough about her to let her get away with stuff. I said this in the Bill Demott thread (of course before he resigned) that the McMahons and Moolah may have known about the other's skeletons in the closet during the 80s, and kept the other close by. Of course, as Capt Lunatic says, it is all speculation, and I doubt any of these rumours, true or false, will ever come to light now.
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Reflecto
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Post by Reflecto on Mar 7, 2015 9:14:37 GMT -5
Makes you wonder why Moolah wielded so much power in WWE. Being female, and especially in her era, I doubt WWF higher-ups cared enough about her to let her get away with stuff. Probably the biggest reason she wielded so much power was...as said earlier, she booked and controlled the Women's Title for decades and had all of women's wrestling in America under her thumb. In her era, it really did go down to "you want women's wrestling on your cards, you deal with Moolah. You don't deal with Moolah, you aren't getting any women's wrestling matches on your card."
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Post by Baldobomb-22-OH-MAN!!! on Mar 7, 2015 9:16:04 GMT -5
we should start calling her Baba Yaga instead. awful bitch.
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Post by The Dark Order Inferno on Mar 7, 2015 9:26:39 GMT -5
It's mostly haters and has-beens making accusations against her. Just like her accomplishments, take them with a grain of salt. These allegations aren't just coming from people who've spent decades in the business never seeing the heights Moolah saw, they're coming from people who have had successful lives outside of wrestling like Mad Maxine in the article linked in the thread. Can you really say that the Acting Chief of Communications for the National Human Genome Research Institute is some bitter nobody who's just upset because she didn't get 15 minutes of fame she'd be poorly compensated for in the 80s? It's like the DeMott situation, these allegations surfaced years ago, but people wrote off the people making them as bitter. How many more people need to make the same claims about her before people accept there's a degree of truth?
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Woo
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Post by Woo on Mar 7, 2015 9:40:41 GMT -5
She was a terrible wrestler first and foremost. Mildred Burke and then later the likes of June Byers were the real pioneers of womens wrestling. The incredible AJW matches and joshi scene is all attributed to Burke. Without Mildred Burke we may never have seen Aja Kong, Bull Nakano, the Crush Girls, Manami Toyota etc. Without Moolah we might have gotten similar talents in the WWE which is a crying shame.
The ONLY reason Moolah had such a long reign is that she OWNED the womens championship. She was the manager of all the female talents in North America, and their booker. She booked herself more strong than anybody in history and when she did lose it didn't matter as she got at least half of her oppoents money anyway.
And yes. It seems like she was a pimp too. These claims are not from 'has-beens' or 'never-weres' but from fairly big names like Sherri Martel, Luna Vachon and Penny Banner. Yes none of them were as big as Moolah (though Sherri could be argued if we include her managerial career), but that is only because Moolah wouldn't let them be. This is from Penny Banner:
"It's wrong to speak bad of the dead, but the comments in the mainstream press and even AP wires come dangerously close to making Moolah seem like some kind of saint, and from a pro-wrestling point of view as some kind of legendary tough shooter. That's utter bull♥♥♥♥. I want to clear up a couple of points, while taking nothing away from Moolah's ability to have a strangehold on women's wrestling from mid '60s to mid '80s in North America.
Lets get this out of way first, so I don't have to dance around the subject - Moolah was a pimp. From her sprawling 42 acre estate in Colombia, South Carolia, Moolah would send out her half-trained underage female-wrestlers to "photo shoots" that would by the standards of today be considered pedophilia and pornography. She sent trainees to wrestling promoters in set numbers. Renting them out to promoters in bulk, with the understanding that the girls would have sex with the promoter and all the wrestlers on the roster who wanted them. Promoters liked free sex, but what they also liked is for boys not to go outside looking for it and possibly running into trouble. Sex on a road with a steady and pliant group of semi-attractive women in return for money, that is what Moolah offered. The women that were sent out on this tours were not told of this "arrangement" ahead of time. They found out about it on the road. Those that refused to have sex with promoters and wrestlers, were raped. (see: Luna Vachon's, Sherri Martel's, and Susie McCoy's shoot interviews).
The reason women's pro-wrestling in North America was and still in large part today considered a joke and just an opportunity to oggle at tits and asses is largely in part thanks to the way Moolah trained her girls and how Moolah wrestled. Moolah was not a good worker. Her wrestling style considered of hair pulling snapmare, headlocks, clotheslines and nothing else. Those that argue that women's wrestling was always like that and Moolah did nothing to change it are ignorant. In the '30s and '40s, female wrestling employed shooters and they wrestled in the traditional sense of the term. Tits and asses were used to advertise and get them in the building, but the girls worked longer and more technically sound matches than today. The champion was always a shooter, and the matches for the championship and leading up to the main event had to be high caliber. The reason Japanese women's wrestling was light years ahead of North American's is because of one person and one person only - Moolah. Mildred Burke, the original women's champion, popularized female wrestling in the world in the '30s. Japan, Canada, Mexico and America can trace women's wrestling directly to her. She used a hard hitting style and outside of being an attractive woman, her matches were no different from the men's matches of her day. Moolah was inspired by Burke, but could not work as well as her. Moolah was not a good worker and so the style she passed onto her trainees once she took over women's pro-wrestling in North America was Moolah-based. Moolah was never a shooter."
But there are so many stories from women of that era that echo her pimping side, her lying and her sabotaging of careers. She truly was a worthless human.
But she's in the Hall of Fame! Yep, but so is a convicted rapist and so too is an alleged murderer of an unsolved crime.
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Post by Mid-Carder on Mar 7, 2015 9:43:09 GMT -5
She was a terrible wrestler first and foremost. Mildred Burke and then later the likes of June Byers were the real pioneers of womens wrestling. The incredible AJW matches and joshi scene is all attributed to Burke. Without Mildred Burke we may never have seen Aja Kong, Bull Nakano, the Crush Girls, Manami Toyota etc. Without Moolah we might have gotten similar talents in the WWE which is a crying shame. The ONLY reason Moolah had such a long reign is that she OWNED the womens championship. She was the manager of all the female talents in North America, nd their booker. She booked herself more strong than anybody in history and when she did lose it didn't matter as she got at least half of her oppoents money anyway. And yes. It seems like she was a pimp too. These claims are not from 'has-beens' or 'never-weres' but from fairly big names like Sherri Martel, Luna Vachon and Penny Banner. Yes none of them were as big as Moolah (though Sherri could be argued if we include her managerial career), but that is only because Moolah wouldn't let them be. This is from Penny Banner: "It's wrong to speak bad of the dead, but the comments in the mainstream press and even AP wires come dangerously close to making Moolah seem like some kind of saint, and from a pro-wrestling point of view as some kind of legendary tough shooter. That's utter bull♥♥♥♥. I want to clear up a couple of points, while taking nothing away from Moolah's ability to have a strangehold on women's wrestling from mid '60s to mid '80s in North America.
Lets get this out of way first, so I don't have to dance around the subject - Moolah was a pimp. From her sprawling 42 acre estate in Colombia, South Carolia, Moolah would send out her half-trained underage female-wrestlers to "photo shoots" that would by the standards of today be considered pedophilia and pornography. She sent trainees to wrestling promoters in set numbers. Renting them out to promoters in bulk, with the understanding that the girls would have sex with the promoter and all the wrestlers on the roster who wanted them. Promoters liked free sex, but what they also liked is for boys not to go outside looking for it and possibly running into trouble. Sex on a road with a steady and pliant group of semi-attractive women in return for money, that is what Moolah offered. The women that were sent out on this tours were not told of this "arrangement" ahead of time. They found out about it on the road. Those that refused to have sex with promoters and wrestlers, were raped. (see: Luna Vachon's, Sherri Martel's, and Susie McCoy's shoot interviews).
The reason women's pro-wrestling in North America was and still in large part today considered a joke and just an opportunity to oggle at tits and asses is largely in part thanks to the way Moolah trained her girls and how Moolah wrestled. Moolah was not a good worker. Her wrestling style considered of hair pulling snapmare, headlocks, clotheslines and nothing else. Those that argue that women's wrestling was always like that and Moolah did nothing to change it are ignorant. In the '30s and '40s, female wrestling employed shooters and they wrestled in the traditional sense of the term. Tits and asses were used to advertise and get them in the building, but the girls worked longer and more technically sound matches than today. The champion was always a shooter, and the matches for the championship and leading up to the main event had to be high caliber. The reason Japanese women's wrestling was light years ahead of North American's is because of one person and one person only - Moolah. Mildred Burke, the original women's champion, popularized female wrestling in the world in the '30s. Japan, Canada, Mexico and America can trace women's wrestling directly to her. She used a hard hitting style and outside of being an attractive woman, her matches were no different from the men's matches of her day. Moolah was inspired by Burke, but could not work as well as her. Moolah was not a good worker and so the style she passed onto her trainees once she took over women's pro-wrestling in North America was Moolah-based. Moolah was never a shooter."But there are so many stories from women of that era that echo her pimping side, her lying and her sabotaging of careers. She truly was a worthless human. But she's in the Hall of Fame! Yep, but so is a convicted rapist and so too is an alleged murderer of an unsolved crime. This is terrible. It's even sadder to think that a woman could do this to other women.
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Post by Viking Hall on Mar 7, 2015 10:05:42 GMT -5
There's too many wrestlers who have come out with almost identical allegations and stories for it not to be at least partly true. Moolah was at the very least a con-artist and a hustler and at her worst a violent pimp who controlled the lives of a lot of young women. She wasn't in her position of power due to being the best at what she did (it's pretty much universally acknowledged that she was at best an average wrestler and not a patch on many of those who had come before her) she was there due to be incredibly good at controlling and manipulating the people around her. Just to train with Moolah I believe you had to pay rent to stay at her compound as well as all of your training fees on top of that which doesn't seem like a massive liberty until you realise that she was also taking a large portion of any of the girls earnings too which essentially put them in her debt from day one.
If it was just one person that had come out with stuff like this, it would be easy to brush aside, but it seems as though you'll struggle to find many within the business when she was at her most powerful that'll have a good word to say about her even after death, that to me speaks a million words.
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Post by bigjohnsons on Mar 7, 2015 11:35:49 GMT -5
Pimping ain't easy
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cait
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Post by cait on Mar 7, 2015 12:34:12 GMT -5
Woo's post is really good. A lot of male performers have come forward too. It's mostly haters and has-beens making accusations against her. Just like her accomplishments, take them with a grain of salt. Wow star blindness is hard to beat on here.
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Post by Kevin Hamilton on Mar 7, 2015 12:42:49 GMT -5
Whoring out (in the literal sense) students will tend to do that.
DeMott got nothing on Moolah.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 7, 2015 20:56:13 GMT -5
Hard to chalk up the number of credible people who have confirmed the stories to be true as "people are bitter they weren't as successful as her." As already stated, Sherri confirmed the stuff, and she was very successful (and inducted into WWE's Hall of Fame). No reason for her (or many of the others) to make things up. Like with DeMott's bullying, all signs point to Moolah just treating everyone like garbage because she felt she could get away with it (and did).
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