I interviewed the now-deceased lady wrestler The Fabulous Moolah some years ago, and I was glad it was a phoner so she couldn’t gouge my eyes. I was fascinated by someone who did what was then considered a very unladylike thing beginning in the harsh years of the Great Depression, though I knew going in that her stories would largely be bullshit. Wrestlers who came of age when the entertainment still had one foot inside the carnival tent never really told the truth because they were so committed to selling a ruse–that something fake was real. They were actors who never exited that stage. The things she did say that were true, however, were stranger than fiction. For instance: “When I was known as ‘Slave Girl,’ I managed the wrestler Elephant Boy, and he’s a priest in Ohio now, you know?” No, I did not know. This was new information.

I asked Moolah (real name: Lillian Ellison) if she considered herself a feminist, and she got a little flustered–perhaps annoyed. It occurred to me later that she thought I was asking her if she was a lesbian. I quickly explained what “feminist” meant, and things moved forward again. Moolah’s close friend, housemate and fellow ferocious wrestler Johnnie Mae Young just passed away at 90. From her obituary by William Yardley in the New York Times:

“Before thongs and silicone and spray tans made women’s wrestling the overtly sexualized spectacle that is now orchestrated by W.W.E., Ms. Young was among the most famous in a colorful cast of women who first rose to prominence in the 1940s, in part because World War II reduced the number of men who wrestled professionally. They were known as lady wrestlers, and many people found them hard not to watch.

‘When I first started wrestling professionally, the men didn’t like the girls,’ Ms. Young said, ‘because we would go out and steal the show.’

Crowds loved to hate her. Organizers sometimes shielded the ring with chicken wire to help protect her from the rotten eggs and vegetables people would throw. Other wrestlers were intimidated by her techniques and her titles.

By the late 1960s, she had become the National Wrestling Alliance’s first national women’s champion. In the late 1990s, W.W.E. hired her and her longtime friend Lillian Ellison, better known as the Fabulous Moolah, whom she had trained.

Ms. Young fought much younger wrestlers and starred in campy skits with young male wrestlers that suggested that her prowess went beyond the ring. Some of her older opponents said the work tainted the legacy of women in wrestling. Ms. Young paid no attention.”