Posted By James Walsh on 06/08/26


No matter how you look at it, wrestling really is a man's thing. For eons, men have laughed at the Three Stooges movies as kids and into adulthood until they one day somehow convince a member of the opposite sex to date them. Then, we put on the Stooges and laugh at it like cackling hyenas all the while being looked at by the poor young lady that we are with as if we are a member of a different species or suffer from severe mental disorders. I had this same experience with the TV show Perfect Strangers (which is legitimately my favorite show of all time) and also professional wrestling. Why These are many things. Things that appeal to the male sensibility. And, decidedly, not the sensibilities of women. Be it the comic book aspect of the good guy of Bruno Sammartino, Hulk Hogan or John Cena conquering the bad guys ala Superman or the bar room brawl aspect of dopey guys beating each other about the head and face with light tubes and chairs, none of this appeals to the typical female. But, it does to the many man. Or, even, the nerdy man who has maly tendencies.

Now that I've established that pro wrestling is the fart joke in your favorite action flick, lets discuss how women have been utilized in this masculine world of wrestling we love so much. Shall we?

In the early days, women were used as eye candy in a very clean sense by today's standards. Gorgeous George Wagner had his valet while other territories had ring girls much like the card girls at boxing or MMA fights of today. There were lady wrestlers who ranged from the hideous side of good looking to Buzz's girlfriend from Home Alone - "woof" material. Then, well, then the 80's happened and that changed a bit.

The lady wrestlers got better looking and wore a little less. Objectively, without the makeup, no one can honestly say that Sherri Martel, Wendi Richter, and Rockin' Robin weren't stone cold foxes. Madusa, Magnificent Mimi, Misty Blue, Bambi, and others that rounded out the wrestling circuit including the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, of which I could write a book about, also were brawling battling beauties if my 50's radio voice doesn't bleed through. But, they weren't the focal point. Do you know who was?

Miss Elizabeth. A stunningly beautiful woman who accompanied "Macho Man" Randy Savage played the Olive Oil in the male soap opera that 1980's WWF had become. She was pretty, always a damsel in distress, and the projected image of the perfect woman by the WWF at the time... It was honestly an innocent story as old as time...

Well, then the 90's came in... And, well, that is the focus of today's article.

The official dates of the Attitude Era are debated by wrestling scholars, if there is such a thing. If I was to put a date stamp on it, I'd say it started in the summer of 1996 when Steve Austin cut that incredible Austin 3:16 promo and, on the other show, Hulk Hogan turned heel. Those two events relit the burnt out flame of pro wrestling in the eyes of the casual fan. It started the raunchy presentation of the WWF that devolved into more and more depraved content as the years went on and it set WCW in a real direction instead of angles like the Dungeon of Doom being the norm. While all that was going on, the girls started to become a part of the show mroe and more too.

Sunny came in to the WWF in 1994 and made parents, including my mother, uncomfortable with the outfits she'd wear. "It is becoming all about sex," my mother said one day when I was watching All American Wrestling, perhaps called Action Zone at this point, on a Sunday afternoon in 1995 and the magazine style show came back from commercial panning up from Sunny, co-hosting with Todd Todd Pettengill. This was a tame pan up. She was wearing clothes. But, the pan up was clearly sexual as she was strikign a pose and the intent was to drive men, probably younger men, wild. It worked.

Sunny really did open the floodgates to more adult content on WWF TV. From dry humping a life-sized Elmo doll that Todd Pettengill swore to me wasn't him in a 2021 interview I did with him but I insist it was to her flashing the Godwins her rear end to distract them in matches, she brought the T&A to WWF while it was still considered squeaky clean entertainment by most. But, once other girls were added to the mix... Well, we were off to the races.

Before I go into the Attitude Era of women, can we address the elephant in the room? No, not Bertha Faye who was tremendous at what she did. If there was never ECW, there would never have been a WWF/WWE Attitude Era. There just would not have been. That is not an opinion, it is fact. If former Penthouse model Beulah McGillicutty didn't start having thong wedging cat fights with "The Queen of Extreme" Francine, if Kimona Wanalaya didn't dance naked on top of the ECW Arena because the ring broke one night, and if ECW didn't take angles like pregnancies that go away with 2 on one female to male threesomes (see the Tommy Dreamer, Kimona, Beulah angle that ended in a nonsensical way) or if the tremendous way that The Sandman and 2 Cold Scorpio ridded ECW of Woman, Nancy Benoit, well, there is no question there would not have been a WWF Attitude Era. Other ECW Divas that deserve a mention include Elektra who came along late into the promotion, Chastity who also had an adult film past, Jasmin St. Claire who, well, does it even need to be said had an adult film past? And, Dawn Marie. Even Nicole Bass was in ECW who WWE later tried to capitalize on the Howard Stern fame of and failed msierably with. ECW's use of women, and the women's performances and willingness to get violent, absolutely played a huge part in shaping what the WWF Attitude Era became.

One week, Vince McMahon was on TV telling parents that their families would always be safe watching the WWF. The next, or at least it felt like the next week, Sable was standing in the ring in a thong and with finger paint hand prints covering her nipples. Oh, and Jacqueline was shaking what she had and having her sans-fingerpaint breasts fall out of her skimpy bikini... Fully Loaded 1998 was awesome. The change was sudden. And, the change of audience numbers was too.

The WWF Attitude Era saw the likes of Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H, Edge, Kurt Angle, and others become household names. Huge personalities that were the biggest and most successful male characters since the roaring Rock 'n' Wrestling era of Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Ultimate Warrior, and that ilk of superstar. But, no oen can say that the women of the Attitude Era, the Divas if you will, weren't just as big of stars.

While Sunny was patient 0, Sable took it to the next level. Also along for the ride was my favorite Terri Runnels who also flashed during an episode of Shotgun Saturday Night and was prone to wearing skimpy outfits and thongs showing what she's got, Her rival was The Kat who had a huge segment where she delivered a Rikishi stinkface to Terri which still makes YouTube censors nervous today. Jacqueline, Ivory, and later Trish Stratus rounded out the top spots for women in the Attitude Era. Even Stephanie McMahon wore halter tops and leather skirts to flaunt her sex appeal before she got her breasts done and lost her appeal in my opinion... And then, well, then there was Chyna.

Chyna entered WWF as the "amazonian woman" that beat up Terri Runnels and helped Triple H win matches. Somewhere along the way, despite being far more muscular than the other girls, she got sexual in her presentation as well thinning down a little in the muscle department and wearing more revealing clothes all the while performing in the ring competing with the dudes and wrestling nearly as well as a dude. Strangely, guys wanted to watch her for various reasons and unlike some of the other girls on the show, women liked her because she was an ass kicker. She is probably the exception to the rule of "girls don't like pro wrestling" because women did like seeing her wrestle.

Sable doing Playboy was perhaps the biggest cultural event that ever happened to the adolescent WWF Attitude Era fan. I vividly remember going to the mall with a friend and his step dad. Were we going to go to the Kay Bee Toys store? Perhaps Satirday Matinee or Suncoast? Nope! My friend's step-dad wanted to go to the mall to get the Sable Playboy.. And, he did... And, he let us look... And, well, it was the first time I realized that sometimes women look better naked in our imagination than in pictures. Seriously, give me Sable at Fully Loaded over her Playboy shoot any day. But, I want you to understand the cultural event this was. My best friend's step dad had a wife I wouldn't have minded a crack at in those days - She was very attractive. And, he took 2 teenaged boys to a mall to seek out a Playboy magazine to see a naked female wrestling personality in the buff. Oh, and he hated pro wrestling, called it fake, and never would watch it if we had it on in his house. Like, never! But, he wanted that magazine!

That illustrates my point. The women of the Attitude Era had a great deal to do with the overall popularity of the WWF, for good or for bad.

Going to high school at the time, guys that had long since stopped watching wrestling would start coming up to me talking about the girls and asking what their "situation" was. Remember, I grew up in New Jersey when New Jersey was still New Jersey and leaned heavily Italian and irish. So, they would ask "What's Terri's situation?" You know, because an acne faced 16 year old chronic masturbator was clearly what the 30 something year old TV star with a rocking body was waiting for her whole life... I got asked the same thing about almost all the girls from the WWF because they knew I never stopped watching... And, I'd know the answer... And, all of them thought they had a shot with them. They all did. And, they'd watch every week with that in their deranged minds.

Megadeth said, "Peace sells, but who's buying?' Eric Bischoff said, "Controversy creates cash." Botha re true statements. But, Vince Russo said, "Sex sells." And, that was the most true statement of all.

Now, I was a WCW fan. Strangely, the company owned by Ted Turner, husband of Jane Fonda and owner of CNN, was a more conservative product. Turner had "Standards and Practices" which was selective, at best, in the network. What I mean by that is WCW was held to a standard that other shows were not. For example, TNT pushed a show called Bul in 1999. No, not featuring the bald bailiff from Night Court but a TV show about some office where, nearest I can tell, everyone had sex with each other at a whim in pretty graphic nature. It wasn't HBO levels. But, it wasn't far off. But, WCW couldn't do that. There would be no thongs on Nitro. No hand print covered breasts. Instead, WCW had to be pretty squeaky clean. Sure, there was the Nitro Girls who were brought in to satisfy that male urge. And, it helped a little. Kimberly Page was in Playboy before Sable ever was and, by the way, her pictorial is vastly superior. But, if you saw women in WCW going at it such as Elizabeth and Kimberly or, later on, Spice from the Nitro Girls and Madusa, it was not going to be a skin show the way it would be on the WWF... And, that hrut WCW tremendously in my estimation.

In the years that have followed, women's wrestling has become a key part of the show. While some of it still involves a base animal urge from the male audience, women are presented much more as equal competitors in the ring rather than eye candy these days. With that being said, I don't see any non-wrestling fans tuning in to see the women wrestle. I don't see anybody's step-dad today going out of his way to drool over pictures of the women of modern wrestling. At least, not outwardly and in public, if you will. But, they did during the Attitude Era. And, those casual fans mixed with the growing number of wrestling fans is what made the Attitude Era arguably the biggest period in pro wrestling history. It was one of the ingredients that defined the era. And, while we look back at it with modern eyes and mock Vince Russo and joke about the sexual nature of the Attitude Era because we've all become so darned enlightened - also known as PC and weak - We really should look back on the women of that era as having played a massive role in the success of the popularity of pro wrestling as a whole. Moreso the WWE who won the war. But, all companies benefitted from the contributions of the women and their appeal to the male audience including the often forgotten, in modern times, casual fan.