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Today we have the first part of an interview with a long time mud wrestling fan. He is a semi-legend in those circles, and I think people will enjoy reading his perspective.
1. What is your favorite type of female combat? Catfight? Mud wrestling? Everything? :)
I
would say all types of female and mixed wrestling but more than
anything am a huge fan of the whole messy wrestling genre (Mud,oil
pudding etc and foxy boxing but in the case of foxy boxing strictly f vs
f)
3. What is your fondest catfight
memory? Several.. seeing the two film scenes I mentioned - seeing messy
wrestling on programs like "Real People". I should point out that in
St.Louis,MO. where I lived and still do there wasn't much of this around
as St.Louis as far as gentlemen's clubs etc and I was too young at the
time early teens so the only way I would see this was on tv and I
should also point out this was women wrestling in bathing suits and not
topless or nude..And the strange thing about there not being any messy
wrestling or boxing at any of the bars is that during the time between
the 50's and early 70's St.Louis was one of the premier cities for
female wrestling. As a lover of female wrestling I've done a lot of
research and discovered there used to be a joke among promoters that if
you came to St.Louis and didn't have a female wrestling match on the
card you could have a riot on your
hands.
Most people also don't know that female
wrestling history was made in St.Louis when Penny Banner wrestled in the
first interracial pro female wrestling match.There used to be and I
don't know if there still is a wrestling hall of fame in St.Louis but
Banner is in that Hall of Fame but stranger the woman who I consider to
be THE female wrestler and the mother of female wrestling as well as the
first REAL female mud wrestler, Mildred Burke is not in this hall of
fame. For younger people Burke was the Moolah or Trish Stratus of her
day. As a matter of fact there wouldn't be a Moolah or Trish Stratus or
any other female wrestlers if it wasn't for Mildred Burke. I very much
would suggest reading Jeff Leen's book about Burke called "Queen of the
Ring" .Excellent book.
Mildred is also important
because she owned a training school and one of her pupils was a lady
named Roselyn Royce who later went on to create the video company "Golden Girls"
where Misses Bowser and Vicary first got their start wrestling in
vidoes and along with triumph studios (another wrestling company
) basically made stars out of a lot of women who started wrestling in
the clubs. Ladies like Cindy "Sugar Ray Renee/Sweet Savage "Yrigollen ,
Pamela Ward, Belinda Belle, Shelly "The Burbank Bomber " Berg, Quisha
Page, Brandi Downs, Lisa Buzelli aka "Rowdy Renee" and Connie Sanchez
just to name a handful ..I could easily list a dozen more names
Speaking
of triumph .I remember around this time getting some of the wrestling
magazines and them having advertisements for triumph and other video
companies. I still have one or two of those magazines. another piece of
trivia,is that a lot of the well known women in the business worked at
triumph in addition to the ones I mentioned there was Kristie Etzold,
Jeanee
"Hollywood "Basone, Malibu, Sandy White, Diane "K.O. Kaycee" Berry (
and not K.O.Casey as she is usually called.)and Robin, who now owns Les
Femme Fatales.
and finally seeing the video "Blue Ribbon Babes" which I will talk a little bit more about later.
favorite companies- This is kind of a tough
question to answer because there are a lot of good companies making
videos. Sad to say I've not viewed all of them- Hit the Mat is one that
comes to mind whose work looks good but I've never seen a match of
theirs. For me I'm really a big fan of the early companies especially
the ones who either featured some messy wrestling match or who gave a
lot of the women I mentioned earlier their start. So I'll try to cover
as many of them as I can.
For me the first company
is one I mentioned earlier and that is Triumph studios. Now to my
knowledge Triumph only shot 5 messy wrestling matches - one of which was
shot at the Hollywood Tropicana and another one filmed at Osko's which
was yet another nightclub that sometimes held mud wrestling matches.I
did manage a few years ago to see a mixed oil match filmed by Triumph
which was pretty good. As I mentioned before Triumph is one of my
favorites because it was the first company to introduce many of the
messy wrestlers to those catfight/wrestling fans who didn't live in
California and weren't able to go to the clubs.
You
must remember female wrestling wasn't as big as it is today and whether
anyone wants to
admit it or not , I would dare say if it wasn't for
these ladies , I don't think female wrestling of any type would be as
popular as it is now. They are basically the pioneers of this sport in
the modern era especially in reference to video matches. So when people
say the style of wrestling they did is silly or unimportant they have no
clue as to what they are talking about.. As a matter of fact if you
omit the matches Mildred Burke filmed in her own private ring some of
which were messy as yes topless and nude as well. ,Then I believe Cindy,
Pamela and Connie are the first real wrestlers , Triumph used as most
of the women at that time who wrestled were models or porn stars.to be filmed in video matches.
As
a matter of fact one of the women who worked for Triumph is a woman
who would later go on to wrestle on the tv program G.L.O.W. and that is
oh course the "8th wonder
of the world" Deanna Booher better known to messy wrestling fans as the
female wrestling Icon "Queen Kong" or as she was known on G.L.O.W ,
"Matilda the Hun". Sadly Truimph for some reason never filmed any of
Queenie's mixed matches. However long before G.LO.W , she was featured
on the tv program "Real People" and did a mud wrestling movie filmed in
London called "Hellcat Mud Wrestlers " and Queenie as also written her
autobiography which you can get at www.queenkong.com". I sadly haven't read it yet ,but have heard it' a great book form those who have...
The
second company is Golden Girls which continued the tradition started by
Triumph but had better camera work in that they used to cameras to film
the matches and had better production values.Much like Triumph most of
the matches were straight forward ring matches or
apartment catfights. Golden
Gilrs did do a few messy matches incuding several mud matches with
Leslie Henderson as well as several oil matches with Sue Bowser vs
such opponents as Elsa "Pepper"Shaw and Kim Schreyer who along with her
younger sister Denise ,were also Tropicana messy wrestlers. Golden Girls
even did several food fights,there were usually pie and food throwing
fight as opposed to say a pit filled with whipped cream or pudding or
some other slippery food substance.
The next two
companies are Double Trouble and Steel Kittens ,both of which have done
tons of videos and over the years have done several f/f as well as mixed
wrestling matches. Practically almost every famous female wrestling
star as worked for these two companies and to try to pick which of the
two is the better one is impossible. From a messy wrestling stand point
SK has a video I believe it's number 44 called "Wet and Wild women"
while
it is not an oil match it is the closest thing one video we have as far
as a messy-type wrestling match between Shelly and Quisha. .The other
match is from DT called "Mud and Destroy" which is a 2 vs 1 mud
wrestling match between Sandy and Francesca Le vs a guy named Andrew.
DT
and SK both took the improvements Golden Girls made and added better
picture quality, tighter editing as well as hiring the world's most
beautiful women to wrestle.
I also have to
mention the last of "The Big Three" which is Robin's Les Femme Fatales"
-The other two of the "Big 3 " of course is DT and Sk. Robin's videos I
like because
most of them I believe are not script which I
like as I tend to prefer non-scripted matches. I however have to say in
fairness to SK and DT, that sometime I get so caught up in their videos I
forget I'm watching a scripted match which of course is a credit to all
of the
wonderful ladies who wrestle .Lets not forget if it wasn't for them we
wouldn't be interested in this much less talking about it.
and
without playing favorites I have to mention again 3 Icons in this
business. Miss Quisha Page and Miss Kristie Etzold and Hollywood , who
shoot their own matches for their own websites. Miss Page who runs http://www.wham.com/ and Miss Etzold who shoots videos for her web page- http://www.kristieetzold.com/ and Hollywood who shoots for http://www.
Outside
the United States I'd have to say the 3 companies that really impress
me are APL, Danube and FoxyCombat. Danube and FoxyCombat I
like because over the years they've done a ton of oil/mud videos far
more than any U.S. company has done There work is also non scripted and
seems to have a faster pace than most US videos because of it.. They
also have a long list of girls that are beautiful and are really good wrestlers.in
fact too many to name off the top of my head I'd have to say
Ingrid,Denise, Kriszta, Timea C. Melanie, and Lucille are some of their
best wrestlers as far as who as worked for DWW.
APL
has turned out a lot of great videos with not only the pros who are
still in the business but with ladies like Mutiny, Goldie Blair, Ariel X
(of Ultimate Surrender fame),Cheyenne Jewel, Tori Sinclair and 7 time
Miss Nude universe herself, Venus Delight who also has had a long
catfighting and wrestling career. I'm not familiar with APL's oil
wrestling matches. I've seen one with Dakota who I believe did most of
their oil
videos.
I should stop at this point and say that
when I judge a company I usually go by the women that work for them,
the camera work and the editing. I take a real interest in the camera
and editing and the production values because at one time when I was
younger I thought of being a screenwriter and wanting to work in movies,
why I didn't would take a whole blog by itself.
So
when I judge a company or video I usually judge it as good, fair or
poor. I can't really call any company or video I 've seen a perfect
video... Well I could (LOL) but then I would be showing a bias.I'll
explain what I mean by that in my answer to the next question.
