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)

2. What got you started into this?  For me it would have to be  seeing the movie Stripes on tv. I think every guy my age was little bit jealous of John Candy getting to wrestle with Susan Meschner, Linda DuPree ,Leslie Henderson  and Sue Bowser and the two other women in this scene. All 4 of these ladies were true mud wrestlers and worked at the Famous Hollywood  Tropicana. The Tropicana and Angel's which was owned by another former Trop Messy Wrestler, Renee Vicary aka "The California Angel" ,were THE two places in the 80's to go to see the best in female messy wrestling. Meschner and Henderson also wrestled in the famous mud wrestling scene in the fiilm "All the Marbles" aka California Dolls. As mater of fact MIss Meschner was also I believe a Miss California as well as a champion black belt and kick boxer. And you can see that in the film "Stripes' during the mud scene when she takes on John Candy.

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.hollywouldproductions/ .com all  do work that rivals the work they've done for the big 3 and I might add most of the time surpasses it.

 

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.