Kimberly spent the mid-90s as a valet in WCW, usually by the side of her real-life husband, Diamond Dallas Page. When the company decided to break down the boundaries between "real" and "fake," Kimberly became a central part of the biggest feud of her husband's career, and one of the biggest in WCW history. A burgeoning babyface, Page was disrespected by Randy Savage, who defaced Kimberly's Playboy pictorial -- and, it was revealed, Kimberly herself, with the aid of some spray paint. This led to a war between the two men, with Kimberly by her husband's side the entire time. Diamond Dallas Page's eventual victory made him a superstar, and Kimberly's new-found cache led Eric Bischoff to suggest a new venture for her. While sexuality had long been a part of wrestling by 1997, the envelopes that the big two (mostly WWE) would eventually push had not yet been budged. Therefore, when WCW debuted Kimberly's Nitro Girls dance troupe -- designed to perform in the ring during commercials and before cutaways -- they were quite a novelty. They were, in essence, WCW's version of the Laker Girls, providing a family-friendly version of titillation that soon became very popular. WCW offered something WWE wasn't putting out, and that enabled them to steal away thousands more fans.
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013
