8 Most Powerful Backstage Politicians In Wrestling History
3. The Fabulous Moolah
It’s here where the key word “powerful” takes on its most literal - and sinister - definition.
The Fabulous Moolah was not merely a starring pro wrestler with the attendant leverage the spot affords - leverage that many talents use to placate their own skyscraper-sized egos and graphene-thin skin.
In an ultra-bleak irony, Moolah once went by the ring name ‘Slave Girl Moolah’. What we know about her life and career renders this quite possibly the most disgusting persona in the history of the industry. The audacity of that, Jesus.
Between the 1950s and 1980s, Moolah ran Girls Wrestling Enterprises: a booking office that controlled the fate of virtually every women’s wrestler of the era. Moolah held the recognised women’s title at virtually all times, at the expense of every one of her supposed proteges. Moolah trained them personally and loaned them across the United States territory loop. The women who turned up for a shot at stardom were very young and even more vulnerable.
It was well-known in wrestling circles that Moolah would take a mammoth cut from their cheque. A ruthless hunger for money and status was compounded by the fact that there was nowhere else for the aspiring women’s wrestler to earn. Moolah held a monopoly over women’s wrestling as, in parallel, the men enjoyed the relative freedom of the territory system.
Of course, those in the know knew what else was going on, but the extent of it was only exposed years after Moolah retreated from public life. Accomplished heel Penny Banner directly told author Pat Laprade that Moolah was a “pimp” who would get paid for renting out her trainees to promoters for sexual favours. Those who refused, Banner continued, were raped. The daughter of Sweet Georgia Brown alleged that Moolah and her then-husband Buddy Lee raped and drugged her mother in a bid to control her.
The fact that Moolah (as the Spider Lady) played an instrumental role in the ‘Original Screwjob’ - by holding Wendi Richter’s tights during an unplanned fast count - is quaint small-fry wrestling bullsh*t compared to her actual abuses of power.