Wrestling / GLOW

We're all champions in the ring.

"It was those rap musical interludes that made me wonder what I had stumbled on. And yes, the novelty did eventually wear off, but for a while there I was hooked. Whatever it was that I was watching, there was nothing else like it, and no way to adequately describe what seemed like a show broadcast from another planet."

—Brad Whitcomb

Back in the 1980s when pro wrestling was experiencing something of a boom, if not locally then at least on national TV, a niche opened for an outrageous television show produced by Johnny Cafarella and David McLane: An all-women's show featuring mad and outlandish characters, epic rap battles, geopolitical debate, and, of course, drop-dead gorgeous women with maybe some actual wrestling thrown in too.

David McLane wanted a balance between "glamour and grit" but the director Matt Cimber wanted more comedy skits and outrageous Camp. As Cimber was bringing the money to the table, he won out. The majority of women who became the GLOW girls were struggling actresses attending another casting call. Apparently "one third" of them left the audition when they heard it would be about ladies pro wrestling. The ones that remained were trained by Mando Guerrero and shipped off to Las Vegas.

GLOW ran for four seasons and continued in various forms after it left television. Although it did attract some mainstream attention (Ever see re-runs of game shows with lady wrestlers as the contestants? Chances are, they're from GLOW), it fell prey to the usual fate of wrestling promotions: the main investor pulled the plug and nobody else was interested. The most notable alumna is Lisa Moretti, who played Tina Ferrari and who went on to become 3-time WWE Women's Champion Ivory.

The show had many Spiritual Successors. POWW was also founded by McLane and went back to his original idea of more wrestling and featured many legitimate women wrestlers - Madusa, Luna Vachon, Wendi Richter and Heidi Lee Morgan - in addition to the GLOW cast members. WOW Women of Wrestling and Wrestlicious were more direct tribute shows featuring many an Expy of the original GLOW characters. A documentary about the show was produced in 2012 titled GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling.

A fictionalized version of GLOW was the subject of a Netflix show released in June 2017.

"Gorgeous Tropes of Wrestling":

• '80s Hair: Oh good God yes. But then, it was the 1980s.
• Action Mom: The Housewives, technically.
• All-American Face:
  • Americana. Her arch-foe was Col. Ninotchka, no surprise.
    Americana: I actually saw Ninotchka about 10 years ago when I was in Las Vegas on business. We had dinner; we were very civil...then she body-slammed me and I drop-kicked her and we called it a night.
  • Spanish Red was a heel that hated Americana but she would not tolerate desecration of the American flag, which gave her a (brief) face turn when a group of heels she was with started to do just that after beating up Americana.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: "'Motormouth' Mike Morgan, monitoring moves and maneuvers for this matchup!" Which leads right into...
• Alliterative Name: Vicky Victory, Widow Woman, Cheyenne Cher, All-Americans, and the aforementioned "Motormouth'" Mike Morgan.
  • The GLOW championship tournament was called "The Run for the Rubies" due to the glittery faux-ruby crown that was the grand prize.
• And Knowing Is Half the Battle: "Hey, I'm Hollywood! Sure I like to have a good time, but I don't mess around with drugs."
• As Himself: Bizarrely inverted. Each of the girls were for unknown reasons credited under false names in the show's credits, which made it very hard to track everyone down for reunion shows.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Zelda the Brain’s shtick was being a tiny nerd who could wrestle in GLOW because she was able to find her opponents’ weaknesses— “I watch my opponents from head to toe/So I always know where to land my blow!”
• Ax-Crazy: The Heavy Metal Sisters, armed with a chainsaw and blowtorch. Daisy and Dementia too.
• Badass Bookworm: Zelda the Nerd, who wore thick glasses (in the ring, with predictable results) and wasn't afraid to hit you over the head with her trigonometry book.
• Badass Boast: Each GLOW girl would get a rap verse that would play over her entrance.
• The Baroness: "Colonel" Ninotchka, of the sexpot variant. She was a Dirty Communist who even looked like Ludmilla Drago.
• The Beautiful Elite:
  • Godiva, the evil nudist.
  • Tina and Ashley, glamorous and wealthy socialites.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Played with. Sometimes injuries were shown. Once Little Egypt was bitten and blood did flow - but it was on her leg and didn't detract from her physical beauty.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Some of the more famous GLOW wrestlers did not audition for the pilot, and were brought in by friends who worked for the company. Among them was Little Egypt, whom Fiji 'discovered' working in a silkscreen store while ordering an outfit. She was shuttled into the ring with even less training than the others — a whopping two weeks. Years later, Egypt (real name Angelina Altishin, real estate mogul) found out about Fiji's health problems and got the GLOW staff back together in Las Vegas to throw her a party.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Susie Spirit alludes to this in her rap.
    "They say I'm made of sugar and spice/But in the ring I'm not so nice"
  • Ditto for Ashley Cartier's:
    "I may be prissy and very rich/But get me mad and you'll see a witch"
• Berserk Button: Don't tell Spanish Red that she isn't American.
• Bifauxnen: Attache is quite manly looking but that's part of her charm.
• Big Sister Instinct: Mt Fiji for Little Fiji. The latter's rap even refers to giving her big sister a call if she's in trouble.
• Big Eater: Royal Hawaiian munches two pineapples at a time before all her matches.
• Big Bad
  • Almost all heels would defer to Aunt Kitty.
  • In later seasons, Big Bad Mama seemed to hold the entire heel faction in her sway. Aunt Kitty would come back as a Greaterscope Villain during the final episodes.
• Big Good
  • Jackie Stallone was the main actor against Aunt Kitty's corrupting influence, but left the wrestling matches to other people.
  • Mt. Fiji became this in later seasons, both in the ring and in Real Life to many of the wrestlers. Jackie Stalone would come back as a Greaterscope paragon in the final episodes.
• Black Widow: The very literal name and gimmick of Black Widow, who came to the ring in funeral veils and a costume with a glittery spiderweb on the shoulder. Her gimmick was occasionally poisoning her rivals to secure a win (followed by a dramatic conclusion in which "paramedics" entered the ring to revive her opponents).
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The cheerleaders. Debbie (blonde), Susie (brunette) and Vicky (redhead).
• Boyish Short Hair: Major Tanya and Attache.
• By-the-Book Cop: Justice, a face whose gimmick was that she was a former beat cop from Harlem.
• Camp: So very much. Wrestlers feuding over a confused caged Manchild can be little but.
• Career-Ending Injury: Sadly a lot of the girls on the show. Most notably Susie Spirit, whose dislocated her elbow in one particularly gruesome injury, and Little Egypt, who tore her ACL in a match with the Heavy Metal Sisters, which finished her up. Her first match with GLOW was also, coincidentally, against the HMS.
• Carry a Big Stick: Jungle Woman had an over sized club.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Mt Fiji and Matilda The Hun made good uses of this.
• Cigar Chomper: Ninotchka's mini cigars.
• Clothing Damage: The Dance of the Sevens Veils Match (alert Vince Russo!) with Little Egypt v. Godiva. Godiva ripped a veil off each time she struck, claiming victory once Egypt was as scandalized as she was.
• Costume Porn: Lisa Moretti (Tina Ferrari) commented on this in a shoot interview. She says the girls were really lucky to get the best quality outfits available - since it was Vegas and they were surrounded by talented seamstresses.
• Couch Gag: In the opening sequence, there was one with McLane in his phone booth office trying to pitch a deal to someone; at the closer, there was one with Aunt Kitty at his apartment trying to set him up with Hollywood, which he always rejected.
• Country Mouse: Sally, Amy, and Babe, the farmer's daughters.
• Cuckoolander Commentator: "Motormouth" Mike, a cross between Tazz and Bob Saget on "America's Funniest Home Videos." In deference to those two, Mike only had two jokes: "Johnny C's a fairy!" and "these girls are fat!"
• Cute Bruiser: Tammy Jones. The puffy pig tails, lollipops and high voice made her look like a little girl, but she did compete for crown, the highest prize for singles wrestlers in the company. Later seasons had Lightning, a comic book heroine who embodied the Cute Bruiser by being only five feet high.
• Dance Battler: Little Egypt, who had a "dance of seven veils"
• Dented Iron: At the end of her life, Mountain Fiji was bedridden and confined to a wheelchair due to her injuries and other health issues.
  • Matilda the Hun, due to years of spinal issues, is also mostly confined to a wheelchair (but at the time of the documentary was seemingly mobile enough to get into a pool and walk and stand for short periods of time) and needed toes on one of her feet amputated due to nerve damage.
• Dirty Communists: "Colonel" Ninotchka (Lori Palmer), ostensibly a Soviet commander who brought her Soviet values into the ring to show these filthee kapitalist peegs how it's done.
• Distaff Counterpart:
  • Justice to John Shaft.
  • Attache to Sgt. Slaughter.
  • Ninotchka to Nikolai Volkoff.
  • Beastie to The Road Warriors (and by extension, Mad Max)
• Drill Sergeant Nasty:
  • Corporal Kelly and Attache.
  • Before the lounge lizards got involved, McLane hired Mando Guerrero (yes, that one) to get the women into shape. Lesson #1 was how to sell. When the girls sniggered at Mando flailing on the ropes, he put one of them in a sleeper hold, then let her drop and "flop around like a fish" in front of everyone.
• Dumb Blonde: California Doll. Sally the Farmer's Daughter teeters quite close too.
• Dumb Jock: California Doll is this too, as a surfer.
• Everything's Better with Sparkles:
  • You expected something different from GLOW? Nearly every outfit had sequins, rhinestones or glitter on them. The hair too.
    Godiva: I had glitter in my hair for ten years after GLOW ended. Glitter is permanent.
  • The GLOW championship was a tiara. And it was every bit as gaudy as you'd expect.
• Evil Brit: Godiva. "I've been on vacati—on holiday..."
• Evil Sorceress: Princess of Darkness; her whole "gimmick" was using black magic to brainwash her opponent. (And it rarely worked the way she intended, seeing as she didn't seem to be all-too good at it.)
• Expy:
  • Little Egypt had one with the same rap and costume called "The Egyptian".
  • Miles Headlock, a commentator in season two and a direct parody of Max Headroom. (Who was still rather popular back then.)
• The Face: Fiji is widely recognized as the spokeswoman of GLOW.
• Family-Unfriendly Violence: At least according to media watchdogs who tried to prevent the airing of the Nazi heels practically torturing Little Fiji.
• Fanservice Faux Fight: The premise of one battle royale was that a large group of good and bad girls entered the ring in street clothes; whichever side was stripped down to their undies first lost. (Ironically, in most cases their "underwear" covered just as much, if not more, than their usual costumes.) Just as the good girls were on the verge of defeat, Bad Girl Godiva, unable to resist, climbed to the top of a turnbuckle and stripped off her remaining clothes.
• Farmer's Daughter: Babe the Farmer's Daughter, along with her sister Sally: two buxom blonde faces who wrestled—excuse us, wrassled—in cut-off shorts and red checkered crop tops.
• Faux Action Girl: Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling couldn't have been more appropriate, or maybe too appropriate, of a name. About 90% of the girls were models and actresses looking to get into show business through wrestling, and the first season had girls with only about 8 weeks worth of training competing. The show bequeathed us with two adult film stars.
  Bleacher Report: Big hair and botched suplexes pervaded every match. You can't expect to make Sherri Martels when you train actresses and stunt girls for six weeks before going on air.
• Foreign Wrestling Heel: Several - Matilda The Hun (German), Godiva (British), Palestina (Syrian), Colonel Ninotchka and Major Tanya (Russian).
• The Fundamentalist: Evangelina, a Holier Than Thou heel who frequently scolded the audience for their “sins”, told them to “read the Good Book”, and started attacking Zelda the Brain before the bell when she brought books about Darwinian evolution into the ring. (Yes, a creationism vs evolution wrestling match.)
• Fun with Acronyms:
  • Melody Trouble Vixen.
  • The team of Tina Ferrari and Ashley Cartier was called T&A.
• Game Show Appearance:
  • A group of 10 GLOW wrestlers made an appearance on Card Sharks (for questions that required a group of 10 people), and Mt. Fiji lifted Bob Eubanks over her head.
  • In another appearance, the GLOW girls faced off against a group of male WCW wrestlers on Family Feud. Significantly, the male wrestlers all appeared in slacks and polo shirts (though Sting wore his facepaint), while the women wore their skimpy wrestling costumes.
• Garbage Wrestling: Quite literally. Tina Ferrari and Ashley Cartier had a "Texas Bar Room Brawl" with Hollywood and Vine that included Ashley stuffing one of their opponents inside a garbage can.

• Gentle Giant: Mt Fiji was The Giant and a face. She was reportedly like this offscreen too.
• The Giant: Mt Fiji (a former Olympic shot putter), Matilda The Hun (a roller derby queen), and Big Bad Mama.
• Girl Posse: Aunt Kitty and her "Tigers".
• Girlish Pigtails: Tammy Jones had these to portray her as cute and innocent.
• Godiva Hair: Clearly Godiva's hair was meant to evoke this, and she's wearing a flesh-toned leotard since she can't exactly wrestle naked on the show. In one match, she used her own hair to choke out Vicky.
• Good Costume Switch: Ninotchka mended her ways after she got fed up with the Soviet Union, moving to France and started wearing pink instead of red. (She was even billed from "Paris, France" all of a sudden.) Oddly, the show continued to treat her as a heel.
• Good Bad Girl: Hollywood likes to party hard and wear skimpy dark lingerie (some the actress bought from lingerie and sex shops) but tends to send the message to kids to stay away from drugs.
• Graceful Ladies Like Purple: Tina Ferrari - rich socialite and Lovable Alpha Bitch - wore lots of purple. Something she continued in her career as Ivory.
• Granola Girl: Daisy's original persona was that of a peace-loving, tie-dye-wearing Good Girl. Somehow, she gradually defected to the Bad Girl side, where her kindness and innocence quickly made her a Butt-Monkey. She left, forming her own neutral side, and was frequently seen doing her intro rap all by herself ("Hi, I'm Daisy and I'm on my own, I do my best when I'm alone...").
• Gratuitous Rap: The show opened with the girls in the ring rapping the show's song.
• The Heart: Fiji is widely recognized as the spokeswoman and morale booster of GLOW. After her body fell into disrepair due to her accumulated injuries and diabetes, Little Egypt took up the baton. She's the one who spearheaded the kickstarter and promotion for the film, the cast reunions and the support network for Fiji.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: While the narrative never quite came out and admitted that Hollywood's character was a streetwalker, it was very strongly implied—even after Hollywood became one of the most popular wrestlers on the show, beloved by both little girls and grown-ups alike.
• Hollywood Voodoo: Big Bad Mama relied on hoodoo magic as much as wrestling moves to win matches
• Hot Gypsy Woman: Little Egypt.
• Hurricane of Puns: Considering the wit displayed on an average episode (12 puns per minute), it's surprising that nobody went on to write for Frasier. But don't worry, if you missed a punchline, the joke deliverer would helpfully laugh at it for you. And if it still flew over your head, they dubbed in a laugh track.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Attache for Corporal Kelly.
• The Ingenue: Tammy Jones though played with since she is still a wrestler.
• Ironic Name: Tina and Ashley were named as a pun on 'T&A'. Lisa Moretti (Tina) joked that she had the ass while Ashley had the cleavage.
• Italian American Princess: Tina Ferrari who is a rich girl who is said to be a stud and credits her Italian blood.
• Jobber: The amusingly named Vicky Victory. She came close to pinning the heels many times, but they always Ric Flair'd their way to a count-out.
• Joisey: The Housewives, the explanation for their attitude.
• Jungle Princess: Jungle Woman.
• Kayfabe: Behind the scenes it was heavily enforced. The girls had to be in character whenever they were out in public. Faces and heels couldn't be seen together and they even had to room with each other - only good with good etc.
• Kid-Appeal Character: Tammy Jones, Thunderbolt & Lightning and the Farmer's Daughters.
• Leotard of Power: Not for Fanservice (ok not just for that), that was the standard garment for female wrestlers in the 80s. There were actually restrictions on how much skin could be shown at the time.
• Lighter and Softer: GLOW was marketed heavily toward kids in spite of the kitschy sex jokes.
• Living a Double Life: The Housewives later remade themselves into Sarah and Mabel, a duo of murderous The Hills Have Eyes-style hillbillies who wore burlap sacks as masks to disguise their previous identities.
  • Dementia (who usually disguised her features with heavy white makeup) eventually shed the greasepaint to assume the persona of the Black Widow. Lampshaded in universe, as one of the announcers once noticed the resemblance and suggested that Black Widow was one of Dementia's hidden personalities.
• Lethal Eatery: Spanish Red's restaurant in the first season, her off-ring segment; not exactly a nice place unless you're a customer who likes being abused by the staff. In the second season, Angel took over, and it was called "Angel's Hell Kitchen".
• Lovely Angels: Heavy Metal Sisters, The Housewives, Corp. Kelly and Attache, the list goes on.
• Magical Native American
  • Little Feather.
  • Susie Spirit started life as one of the cheerleader squad but always acknowledged her Native American roots, eventually dropping the cheerleader shtick and renaming herself Cheyenne Cher, with appropriate image change.
• Man Bites Man: Attache, to Tina Ferrari in their submission match to break Tina's figure-four leglock. Dementia bit Little Egypt's leg until it bled but since everyone expected her to bite, technical wrestlers like Tina just put her in holds where she could only chomp on air.
  Hollywood: [on commentary] Attache fights cleanly.
  Sir Miles: What makes you say that?
  Hollywood: She left Tina a leg to stand on.
  • Beastie, true to her name, could be expected to bite someone—or try to—in nearly every match. She even frequently entered the ring gnawing on a (plastic) human femur.
• The Mentor: Aunt Kitty to the Bad Girls, Jackie Stallone to the Good Girls. Later, Big Bad Mama to the Bad Girls and Mt. Fiji to the Good Girls.
• Mirror Match: Meet Daisy. She is tall. This, and a blonde wig, were enough to boost Godiva's horse and ride it to the ring. Godiva arrived and challenged her to a bout, with the horse as a trophy.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Some of the most capable wrestlers were also the least likely: Tina a.k.a Ivory (no exp), Ninotchka (no exp), and Godiva (high school gymnastics).
• Nubile Savage: Jungle Woman, Little Feather.
• Of Corsets Sexy: Hollywood and Vine wrestled in lingerie that resembled corsets. According to the former, it was her own idea.
• Once an Episode: Nearly every episode of the first two seasons ended with Aunt Kitty knocking on David's hotel room and trying to "set him up with" Hollywood (heavily implied to be prostituting her.) The general format was:

  Aunt Kitty: I'm telling you David, this girl is [random expression]! ^Example ("a real treasure!")

  David: Good, we can [pun on said expression]! ^Example ("take her out back and bury her!")

  David '*slams door*

  Aunt Kitty & Hollywood: *Outrage and pounding on door, fade to black.*

• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: All the foreign accents slip occasionally, since most of them are fake. Godiva and Tanya (English and Russian, respectively) were especially prone.
• Parts Unknown:
  • The Princess of Darkness was billed from there.
  • Star, from "The Far Reaches of the Galaxy"
  • Beastie, who was somehow from a Mad Max-style future.
• Perky Goth: Evil perky but Chainsaw and Spike do fit.
• The Pigpen: Stinky definitely drew the short straw when it came to gimmicks.
• Pom-Pom Girl: The Cheerleaders - Susie Spirit, Debbie Debutante and Vicky Victory - perky and lively Faces.
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy:
  • Move over, "Stand Back", here comes the rapping referee.
  • The hip-hop on GLOW was about what you'd expect from a bunch of middle-aged Jews in Nevada. Throw in some late-80s slang and broad foreign accents, and you get: Wham! Bam! It's a wrestling jam!
    "Stone Cold" Steve Austin: ♪ Angelina, you come from the streets, you come from the city... ♪
• Pretty in Mink: Ashley and Tina's shawls. Ninotchka (after her turn) was also prone to coming into the ring in a bright pink, glittery costume with a mink stole.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: California Doll once called Spanish Red a wetback on-camera, claiming she had heard it from the other Faces. (Possibly why nobody at all objected to the rather brutal beating Red gave her for it.)
• Power Hair: Ninotchka always had a short cut. Cheyenne Cher wore a modified buzzcut.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Dementia was this. She was always carted into the ring with some sort of restraint (often a cage) wore a hockey mask (though she usually ditched it before the match started) and always had a hatchet with her and some sort of child's toy. Her opponents were often able to use this to an advantage. For instance, in one match, she grabbed a poster of Tina that a kid - likely a plant - had taunted her with, and started to scribble over it with crayons, completely oblivious to the actual Tina. She didn't fight back until Tina had been coldcocked her from behind. Twice.
• Refugee from TV Land: Thunderbolt and Lightning were comic book heroes.
• Rich Bitch:
  • Averted. Tina and Ashley were sweet, playing faces the entire time.
  • Roxie Aster and Tiffany Mellon, who assumed the Rich Bitch gimmick after Ashley and Tina departed, were also faces. Roxie played a glamorous but good-hearted 5th Avenue socialite, and Tiffany was her equally kind if clueless shopping buddy.
• Ricky Morton: Little Fiji, in contrast to Mountain Fiji who would have been virtually unstoppable if she was not always having to save Little Fiji from all her enemies. One match where she tried to go it alone had the Heel commentator remark that she was likely expecting her big sis to come bail her out.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: The Royal Hawaiian was a wrestler herself.
• Sassy Black Woman: Ebony. Soul Patrol too. Justice was a bit more hard-nosed but could still bring the sass.
• Self-Deprecation: David McLane was apparently very tight with money - so a gag was written in that his office was actually a public phone booth.
• The Silent Bob: Dementia never spoke one word; the other Heels did her rap for her. Possibly the biggest reason it was difficult to notice that the actor was playing more than one character.
• Sexy Whatever Outfit: It turns out The Housewives are the exception to this rule. The girls playing them couldn't find a way to make them sexy and so they created the Heavy Metal Sisters instead.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Godiva's (Dawn Maestas) costume consisted of a sheer, skin-colored body suit, strategically placed silk flowers, and a flowing blonde wig. Oddly, everyone in the GLOW house came to her for fashion tips. She's also Old Money, just like the real Lady Godiva. And her entrance music preaches self-acceptance. Don't worry, Dawn doesn't know why she's a heel, either.
  TMC: In her own words: be yourself, because trying to be like other G.L.O.W. girls is weird and requires lobotomization.
• She-Fu: The cheerleaders mostly, for obvious reasons.
• Shout-Out: Ninotchka is a reference to the old MGM film. Debuting as a not-so-undercover spy for the Soviets, she later abdicated her GLOW crown and jumped on a plane to Paris to renounce her Russian citizenship...earning the ire of the heels, who all but called her smelly frog. As mentioned above, her face turn may have been inspired by Nikolai Volkoff in the WWF, back when the Berlin Wall fell and Glasnost was happening.
• Sinister Minister: Evangelina, a televangelist heel.
• Slasher Smile: Both the Heavy Metal Sisters in their opening rap.
• Socialite: Tina and Ashley, though they were heroic examples. Later, Roxie and Tiffany took on the persona fully.
• Southern Belle: Tara and Scarlet, who called themselves the Southern Belles and drew their names from Gone with the Wind, came to the ring with fans, long faux hoop skirts (which they shed to reveal their singlets), and very fake Southern accents.
• Spicy Latina: Spanish Red. And if you want a loose definition of Latin, then there's Tina's rap...
  "All my opponents know I'm a stud, what can I say, it's the Italian blood."
• Spiritual Successor: The show's three most notable successors were Powerful Women of Wrestling (POWW) which was more wrestling-based, WOW Women of Wrestling which went dormant after one year in 2001, but made a surprising return in 2012 (partnering with Glory Kickboxing of all things) in 2017 before getting a full revival in 2020, and Wrestlicious which was a little bit of both, airing for one year and being very silly but also putting on better matches at more consistent rates than WWE's Divas or TNA's Knockouts were that year. Others include LPWA and CRUSH. POWW and WOW were also run by David McLane.
• Springtime for Hitler: The behind-the-scenes story is one of real camaraderie that emerged in a show which, for all its merits, should never have had any success. Sure enough, the owner of the casino used GLOW as a tax write-off and advertising vehicle for his own products, never expecting it to succeed. Most of the girls left wrestling to go model or produce films and, apart from Fiji and Matilda (who both ended up in assisted living centers), it served everyone's purposes pretty well.
• Street Urchin: The joke with Hollywood is that she dresses and acts like a streetwalker, even though that wasn't included in the script. Hollywood cribbed from Madonna and came up with the idea of wrestling in lingerie and black boots. She survives by crashing Hollywood parties and nicking everything that isn't nailed down, including the commentator's bowtie.
• Sublime Rhyme: All the time.
  "Tina Ferrari, the capitalist dream. She won't look so good face down in the ring! She's thinks she so tough and so strong! I will destroy her, it won't take long."
• Subverted Trope: Nature Boy was nothing like the other three wrestlers to use that moniker.
• Suck My Rose: Spanish Red had many flowers to throw around. Became a Cheap Pop after her Heel–Face Turn.
• Surrounded by Idiots: This was the whole point of Ninotchka's "Easy as KGB" off-ring segments; where she received calls from "Vladimir", who was clearly the most incompetent spy in existence. (For example, he once called to report he had found an international agency that Russia was excluded from - the International House of Pancakes.) These segments always ended with her yelling at him and threatening some sort of weird punishment (like sending him to a nudist colony in Siberia) which she clearly never made good on.
• Taking Up the Mantle: For a time, there were two evil Russians: the original Ninotchka was joined by Tanya, another glorious Communist character, and the two were tag-team partners. When Ninotchka "defected," lured away by capitalist decadence, Tanya became her mortal enemy and one of the major villains.
• Team Mom: Big Bad Mama was a villainous example. Mt. Fiji was her counterpart on the face side.
• True Companions: The girls on the show became these.
• Valley Girl: Sunny, a stereotypical blonde surfer chick from California, perpetually spoke in Valley Speak.
• Villainous Crush: Hollywood towards McLane, it seemed, seeing as the closing Couch Gag involved Aunt Kitty trying to play matchmaker between them.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Not only did Princess of Darkness qualify, any tag team partner she had turned a lot more vile when with her. For example, she once used the brainwashing spell to turn Mt. Fiji against her sister, and in another, used it on Little Egypt to make her hold still so Dementia could use her axe to decapitate her. (Fortunately, both Heels had forgotten about Egypt's partner.) Also fortunately, she wasn't as competent as the other Heels; both those matches ended with her shoved in Dementia's cage with her and both carted out.
• Viva Las Vegas!: The show was filmed out of the old Riviera Hotel and Casino (now-defunct), with the ladies assigned to apartments on the strip. Trump Plaza in Atlantic City was a popular venue also.
• With My Hands Tied: Amy thought she had the advantage by tying Ninotcka's wrists to her belt. Amy was still wearing the belt at the time, a strategic error: Ninotchka's superior strength allowed her to twirl poor Amy upside-down and piledriver her for the pin.
• World of Action Girls: It was an all-women's wrestling promotion.
• World of Pun: Many of the gags were based around wordplay and bad puns.
• You Are Fat: The announcer constantly commented on the size of some of the wrestlers, even those who weren't overly heavy. The Bad Girls got singled out far more often than the Good girls: Godiva was nicknamed "the bulky Briton" who consumed "five meals a day!", while Ninotchka was a frequent target even after her Heel–Face Turn, with the announcer remarking on her ugliness, low cunning, and weight ("I never thought I'd see a pink elephant fly!"). Consider that both Ninotchka and Godiva were fan favorites who were extremely well-liked because of their looks and personaes—Godiva a fun, flirtatious exhibitionist and Ninotchka a sultry arrogant Ice Queen.
  • Weirdly, there were rarely any negative weight-related comments about Big Bad Mama or Mt. Fiji, both of whom weighed well over three hundred pounds (136 kg). If anything, the remarks tended to be about how they were superb athletes in spite of their size or how their weight was part of their advantage.

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