Cheap Wrestling for Cheap People 07.06.06: G.L.O.W.
Posted by Ryan Byers on 07.06.2006
Another cheap wrestling tip, plus I go where only the bravest of internet wrestling recappers go. Yes, that's right. I'm reviewing Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Cheap Wrestling for Cheap People. I'm Ryan Byers, and I'm back from a fabulous Fourth of July vacation, ready to start what should be the much less stressful second half of my summer. Fortunately I came back just in time to provide you with yet another rip-roaring edition of this here column.
Cheap Wrestling Tip #43: The Great Conversion
In past columns, I've discussed how the world's conversion away from VHS and towards DVD as its preferred home video format has produced some excellent opportunities for gathering up cheap wrestling so long as you're still willing to collect the older format. Used record stores are filling up with VHS tapes, Half.com has a glut of them, and even garage sales are staring to become a beneficiary of this bizarre trickle-down effect. However, there's one avenue that a lot of people haven't though of when tracking down these tapes. Many private collectors are currently in the process of converting their old VHS collections to DVD-R through the magic of home recording equipment. Though I don't quite have the time or technology to be one of those individuals, I do have the spare cash and the lack of dignity necessary to pick up their droppings.
If you frequent any professional wrestling newsgroups or messageboards, I strongly suggest asking around about whether anybody is planning on converting their tapes anytime soon and what they plan on doing with said tapes when everything is done. Usually they're just going to wind up in the trash, so it's a perfect opportunity to get some master or first generation copies of interesting events for a relatively low price, particularly if you're willing to pick up the shipping costs. I recently engaged in this sort of behavior, and I dug up a whole treasure trove of forgotten classics, including this surprising bit of footage.
Title: Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (Episode 100) Released By: David McLane Enterprises Release Year: 198something Run Time: 60 minutes Found At: The back of some guy's closet. Price: FREE
The opening montage tells us that we're in for a very special treat, as tonight is GLOW's 100th episode! We're going to see all the highlights from both in the ring and the comedic side in this, the first of a two part special! All exclamation points are added completely for the sake of sarcasm.
The GLOW girls rap to open things up, breaking away after a while to feature the solo raps of Palestina, Tammy Jones, Spanish Red, the Heavy Metal Sisters, and Tina Ferrari before going to THE HOUSEWIVES! (Non-sarcastic exclamation.) This is truly the only attempt at GLOW comedy that I've seen which has actually clicked, as two women in bathrobes and facial masks attempt to rap and then have an argument with one another when their rhyme scheme falls apart. One nearly drops the f-bomb in a line that looked unintentional, and they cover for it beautifully, staying in character the whole while. I love these women, middle aged as they may be. Jackie Stallone and Aunt Kitty then rap, killing off the middle aged love entirely.
The show proper opens on an empty GLOW ring, where two men in suits sit and talk about how they started it all. One is named Steve, but they other's identity is never revealed . . . as though it actually matters. They go over a condensed history of GLOW, claiming to have had over eighty girls in over 500 matches and recount how people gave them a hard time when they suggested lowering the ring ropes to make the girls look taller and expanding the apron for more visible action. But no . . . they didn't do it all . . . the girls did it all, or so the man in shadows claims. Ahhh, memories of those first year girls . . .
(Cue Wayne and Garth hands waving over the screen.)
Our first fun memory is Americana and the California Doll teaming up to take on Spanish Red and the Royal Hawaiian, because a Mexican immigrant and a chick from Hawaii are two evil foreign heels if I've ever seen them. The Hawaiian is eventually pinned by Americana with a sunset flip, and the feud between Americana and Red only escalates later on when they brawl outside of the ring, down the Riviera Hotel escalator, and out on to the street. David McLane, who is either a really fast runner or hired a really poor editing crew, runs up out of another exit and meets them to break up the fight. Red cries that David is always favoring Americana and rips the shirt off of his tuxedo . . . not the last we'll see of that tonight.
Up next is some sort of elimination match, with Tammy Jones and the California Doll remaining on one team to take on military musclehead Attache and Hollywood, half of Hollywood & Vine. Tammy is shown getting some offense (including a weird quasi-rana), but it's all for naught as Attache rolls her up for the pin seconds later. Meanwhile, the Doll throws Hollywood out of the ring, where she gets counted out. Attache and CA fight it out, and the Doll gets a damn-good-looking-by-GLOW-standards legsweep and awkwardly reverses a sunset flip attempt to score the match's final elimination.
Now things really get silly, as we cut to the Princess of Darkness "hypnotizing" Olympia while she's held in place by Palestina, the wrestling terrorist. A crazed Olympia rips off her shirt and flexes, causing McLane to reference "The Incredible Hulk." (cough cough) She then beats up fellow babyface the California Doll as well as the referee and then stalks around the ring looking for somebody to choke. It looks like the target is going to be the Doll . . . but, surprise surprise, the airhead ducks and Olympia winds up choking the Princess of Darkness. Irony rules! Olympia slowly comes back to reality (well, wrestling reality anyway), and Palestina beats up the ref just for the hell of it.
Palestina and the Doll are then shown brawling, with the terrorist being thrown in to a wall for kicks. The Cali native then dumps some nearby trash on her and runs her out of the building for good measure. I hope we mix things up pretty soon, because this is starting to look like a Best of the California Doll comp . . . and I don't think the world's ready for that, especially when it gets to the hour long block of Points to Ponder.
Things do, in fact, change up. A full length music video called "Nasty and Mean" airs, and it displays the heels of GLOW at their worst . . . or best depending on how you look at it. It's no more or less cheesy than music videos the WWF was putting out the at the same time, but that still makes it damn silly. Of note: The evil girls dance in a casino and trip waiters, all the time singing about how they don't want pity but rather money and also mentioning their preference of eating meat raw. Another trip to the men in the empty ring follows, and nothing of note is really said before we go to the next "match."
Though the rules aren't really explained at first, this appears to be an eight woman evening gown (or the GLOW equivalent) match, pitting the California Doll, Ashley, Tina Ferrari, and Becky the Farmer's Daughter against Hollywood & Vine and the Soul Patrol. It's a huge fucking mess with all of the girls tearing at each other's garments before the "Rivera hotel staff" turns off the lights because the battle is too risque or something. That sort of makes you wonder why they would have allowed it to take place in the building in the first place. David tells us not to fret, as GLOW staff will (and does) get the auxiliary power turned on. Um, if the hotel staff controls the main power, why don't they control the backup as well? Blah.
The backup lights come on just in time for us to see the California Doll spraying suntan oil all over Vine, but she gets triple teamed and pulled out of the ring as the final member of the heel team is finally stripped of all her clothing. The four heels then grab the Doll and hold her outside of the ring, because apparently there is some stipulation by which you have to be in the ring after an allotted amount of time to get your share of the winner's purse. (Huh?) Naturally, she runs out of time . . .but, as revenge, all four faces beat up David McLane and tear up his tuxedo, with the Doll stealing her check back in the process. I'm beginning to think that McLane had some sort of humiliation fetish and really got off on segments like this. He certainly booked them frequently enough.
A very special vignette of Asking Ashley is next, as our wannabe Ann Landers reads off the best (or worst) of Tim's letters and then finally meets up with him for a night on the town. Good message to the men out there I suppose . . . keep sending the woman you're attracted to lewd messages and eventually she'll just give in and bang you.
We go back to the empty ring, where the two men discuss the "GLOW games," which I had never previously heard of. Apparently it was just a series of non-wrestling events between the heels and the faces, with the winning team getting a big shiny trophy at the end. This sounds frighteningly like the concept that killed off the AWA. One of the men claims he came up with the idea because "things made too much sense" in GLOW. That may be the biggest line of bullshit ever spoken in the history of professional wrestling. Yes, I'm aware of how much ground that covers.
Anyway, "highlights" of the GLOW games are next, starting with Matilda the Hun and Mountain Fiji squaring off in a pizza eating contest. You know what happens when food and wrestlers get together, right? Right. Matilda complains about not getting the toppings that she requested, and then a huge food fight breaks out between the entire roster. This gives Fiji the win by DQ . . . somehow. The heels are the shown winning a tug of war, and, believe it or not, they even win cleanly. What would Jesse Ventura think? Then, with an injured Susie Spirit taking on guest announcing duties, Attache and Debbie Debutante have a race up the Rivera Hotel escalators (those things get more air time than some of the wrestlers). Attache cheats by placing her feet on the sides of the escalator instead of the moving stairs, and this gives the faces their second DQ win. Finally, Ashley cleanly defeats Chainsaw in an arm wrestling match, which is perhaps the only clean finish to an arm wrestling match in pro wrestling history. Mountain Fiji accepts the team's trophy, giving a sickening babyface speech about how you can win without cheating. Gag me.
We go back to the men in black, as they talk about some of the "great" tag teams in GLOW history and set up a video package of the Heavy Metal Sisters' greatest moments. First up, they give Ashley a present on her birthday . . . which turns out to be a fake severed arm. You know, if you're going to go that over the top, why even bother saying it was a fake? They then humiliate the Southern Belles, tearing up their hoop skirts (gasp!) and forcing them to bark like dogs. There's a huge plot hole here, because, if these women were actually Southern belles, they would have massive redneck brothers who would muderize anybody who did this to them. Up next, the "All Americans" (Americana and some other chick) are shown paying tribute to Nathan Hale, a patriot who faced the hangman's noose for his country. Everybody sees this one coming from a mile away, as the Sisters attack and "hang" the All Americans, despite the fact that they were standing straight up on the ring apron. D'oh.
Believe it or not, there's MORE fun with the sisters on tap, as they beat the crap out of some random paramedics. In another incident, Spike bites Debbie Debutante's bare foot and then slips off in to a "catatonic state," with the paramedics unable to remove her. Both girls are stretchered out, since Spike just won't let go. Um, ok. Some fun and games with the team's plastic meat cleaver follows, and I think that I've seen just about enough of the Heavy Metal Sisters for a lifetime. Oh well, at least it wasn't the California Doll.
And, to balance out the PURE UNADULTERATED EVIL that we just witnessed, the babyface music video "Good Girls Don't" plays. Basically the girls dance around a pool, attempt to sing, and fail very miserably at both. At least the WWF was smart enough to have their wrestlers growl or do spoken word/rapping. Here the women actually try to carry a tune, and it's miserable. The whole thing ends with the girls diving in to the pool after some men, with the exception of Tina and Ashley, who just stand around and wait for the men to come to them. It works, and they stay dry. Good deal.
The Empty Ring Men are back, and they can't believe they've spent all this time with only covering the season one and two girls. They decide to continue with the other seasons "next week," though sadly I did not get a tape of that. They do, however, promise some more highlights before they go. Joy.
The first of these is another fairly infamous GLOW moment, as a tag team called the Showgirls wrestles Hollywood and Vine. The Showgirls seem a bit more interested in groping their opponents than actually beating them, and some bad wigs pop off to reveal men. Stop it, my sides are splitting here. McLane breaks the whole thing up, and the Showguys say they did it all to get dates with Hollywood and Vine, who accept all too readily. It is, of course, a ruse as they steal the men's watches while giving them a post-match hug. And that did WHAT to get anybody over or advance an actual wrestling feud? If anything, Hollywood & Vine (heels) wind up looking like faces because they stuck it to a couple of guys who were forcing themselves on them. At least that's what it looks like now . . . logic hasn't changed that much since the 1980's, has it?
Up next, we get clips of a stretcher match between Americana and Palestina, which may be the only stretcher match worse than Sid Vicious vs. El Gigante. It looks like Americana is about to get dragged out, but she raises her leg up so that it hooks the ropes and prevents her loss. She then straps her opponent down on to the stretcher and lifts her up in to the corner just so that the camera might get a few shots of Palestina insulting America. Her last line is "You will not drop me," at which point Americana lets go of the stretcher and has it drop down to the mat. Palestina sells it like she's been dropped off of a ten story building through a table and on to some flaming thumbtacks wrapped in barbed wire, and she's dragged out of the ring for an Americana win.
Then, for some reason, there's a five-second clip of a Housewives match in which one of them uses tongs to pull on a girl's nose. What? The credits hit, and we get a musical performance from Mountain Fiji and Susie Spirit, singing a little song entitled "My Heart Belongs to Daddy." Both are dolled up like showgirls (not THE Showgirls, mind you), and it's fairly uninteresting. At the end, Fiji is shown laying in bed, and it was apparently all a dream . . . get it? Because she's fat and nobody would actually want to see her in that role! Ha ha! That's a show.
Overall
Well, if you're a GLOW fan, I'm sure you'd love this . . . but do GLOW fans actually exist? If they do, are they actually members of the same group that encompasses wrestling fans, or are they just perverts with the same fetishes as David McLane? Anyway, I'm digressing here. I found the highlight selection a little odd with better remembered GLOW acts like Tina and Hollywood & Vine not being featured heavily, but this is really probably about as good as GLOW gets. If you're looking for an introduction to the McLane era of the promotion or the talent in general, here you go. It's GLOW, it's not like you should go in expecting quality wrestling, quality comedy, or quality production values. Definitely check this out if you've ever wondered what would happen if pro wrestling and Hee Haw had an autistic child and then proceeded to drop it on its head several times after its birth.
