10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About Women's Wrestling
5. The Original Screwjob
When you saw 'screwjob' in a wrestling context, thoughts will always rush back to Montreal, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, and the 1997 Survivor Series. It'll take something truly monumental to replace this as wrestling's most famous screwjob, but it wasn't the first time the company has stooped to such lows in order to deal with paranoia centring around a championship belt.
In the 1980s Wendi Richter was by far the most popular female wrestler in the US, and as such she won the Women's Championship from The Fabulous Moolah (more on her shortly). Richter would go on to defend the title against mysterious challenger The Spider at Madison Square Garden, during a time when the champ was in contract negotiations with the company.
To Richter's shock and surprise The Spider abandoned the booking of the match and pinned Richter to the mat, picking up the win and the title in the process. She was then unmasked to reveal herself as Moolah, and the penny dropped for Richter. She soon left the company.
There are all sorts of claims surrounding the screwjob, but the general feeling is that it was a decision made by Vince McMahon himself. Richter left the arena still in her gear and went straight to the airport, and never spoke to Moolah again. Richter was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2010, but this moment was conspicuously ignored.