Working Stiff: Wrestling's History With Playboy Magazine
As the global WWF juggernaut rolled on, the term 'wrestling' became even more synonymous with Stamford. The exposed epidermis of bare breasts was about as far from the mind as possible when considering an increasingly cartoonish world occupied by superheroes and supervillains in the guise of undead morticians, bent police officers, and a flag-waving champion of all that was good and righteous.
On wrestling's outer fringes, adult-oriented content could be found - usually on the backpages of Apter mags, where clandestine tape traders advertised bone-bending video nasties. Likewise in its furthest frontiers: AJW star Mitsuko Nishiwaki stripped to her delicates for a tasteful spread in the Japanese Playboy in April 1991, just a year removed from her top-billed retirement. But clothes were never unfastened by the mainstream current of the industry.
By 1993, Vince's portrayal of female talent was far removed from the redolent flirtatiousness of Miss Wrestling and her GLOW successors. Eager to reintroduce competitive women's wrestling back into his fold after it had largely vanished following the infamous double-crossing of Rock 'n' Wrestling star Wendi Richter, McMahon drafted in joshi Debrah 'Madusa' Miceli. According to Miceli herself, Madusa - now known as 'Alundra Blayze' - was the first female wrestler the WWF chief considered 'legitimate', to the extent that he looked to build an entire division around his incoming star by gifting her the Women's Championship abandoned since 1990.
Despite being hand-picked to spearhead the new brand of credible women's wrestling, it was with some irony that Miceli was inadvertently the first WWF star to have stripped for Playboy, albeit outwith the company's auspices. Years prior to her move to Connecticut, the AWA starlet mimicked Magnificent Mimi in dropping drawers for the mag, only to place an interdiction on their release should the lewd images scupper an upcoming tour with Japanese promotion AJW. Had the saucy snaps not stayed hermetic in the Mansion's vault, it's possible McMahon would have looked elsewhere for his new icon. It was an employment policy that would change dramatically in the years to come.
It was a case of right place, wrong time for Blayze. In 1995, WWF's financial problems saw the women's section once again mothballed, with its champion unceremoniously slashed from the payroll. Just as no-one saw her strip for Playboy, so too did nobody see her officially stripped of the pink belt; she famously turned up on the rival WCW Nitro to drop the strap in a handily placed bin. When the title was next resurrected three years later at the behest of a new female focal point, it was to be a completely different story.
[CON'T. P3/9]