FIVE TAKEAWAYS FROM SISTERHOOD OF THE SQUARED CIRCLE

Sisterhood of the Squared Circle: The History and Rise of Women’s Wrestling By Pat Laprade and Dan Murphy ECW Press, 384 pp; $22.95

An encyclopedia of women wrestlers from the early carnival days to the modern directto- DVD and live, pay- per- view events, Pat Laprade and Dan Murphy’s Sisterhood of the Squared Circle is full of anecdotes and trivia from over a century of wrestling. Here are your takeaways: 1 When she was still in her teens, Mildred Burke married Billy Wolfe, a pasthis- prime carnival wrestler, who guided her toward stardom as the first major star of women’s wrestling in the 1930s and 1940s. Wolfe was an abusive misogynist who built a successful business empire on the backs of Burke and the other women who wrestled for him. A typical Wolfe move: When he and Burke finally divorced, Wolfe agreed to stay away from women’s wrestling in exchange for $30,000; he was paid, reneged on the deal (but kept the money), and had Burke blacklisted from wrestling events. 2 A boon to equality, the next major impresario in women’s wrestling was, at the very least, a woman. Unfortunately, that’s about the end of Lillian Ellison’s – better known as the Fabulous Moolah – contribution to women’s rights. Her business model expanded on the precedent set by Wolfe; Moolah ran a wrestling school where potential stars had to pay room and board for the honour of training with her, and she controlled enough territory to ensure that only her trainees saw action in the ring. At best, it was indentured servitude, but her stranglehold on the sport kept her in business through the WWE era. 3 In the early 1980s, Vince McMahon Jr. looked to grow wrestling from a regional attraction to a national spectacle. This led to the Rock ’ n’ Wrestling Connection, which featured at its centre a monthslong feud between Captain Lou Albano and pop star Cyndi Lauper. The feud culminated in “The Brawl to End It All” on MTV, where the then- 61- year- old Fabulous Moolah (who saw the way things were going and sold her women’s title to the World Wrestling Federation), representing Albano, faced off against newcomer (and Moolah student) Wendi Richter, fighting for Lauper. The match was a ratings hit, scoring a higher viewership than any previously televised match, and led to Richter becoming a star on par with Hulk Hogan. But it would be the last time a women’s fight took top card over men’s. A contract dispute – Richter was allegedly paid $5,000 for the first WrestleMania, while her male counterparts earned up to $ 100,000 – led her to leave the World Wrestling Federation. 4 Women’s wrestling has always struggled to be viewed as more than a novelty; their athleticism at odds with the sexuality their ( typically) male bosses want them to put forward. While the balance seldom fell in favour of athleticism, the true low point in women’s wrestling came during the WWE’s most successful period. The so-called Attitude Era that gave us The Rock, Triple H and Stone Cold Steve Austin, saw women’s wrestling relegated to “cat fights” or worse, evening gown matches – the winner determined by who strips the other first – and the wrestlers themselves re-branded as “Divas.” 5 After a hundred years of crooked managers, bad deals and lack of respect in the mainstream wrestling world, a new era of women’s wrestling emerged at the start of the new century. Independent promotions like SHIMMER, driven by pay- per- view and DVD sales, allowed women wrestlers space to perfect their sport. The WWE development league, NXT, took notice and started developing their own women’s champions, whose popularity led to more serious women’s matches in the WWE and a change of branding: the “Diva” title was dropped in favour of the WWE Women’s Champion. Women’s wrestling still doesn’t have equal billing (or pay), but there’s at last a growing recognition that it’s much more than a novelty.