Ten years ago today (May 1, 2003), female wrestling icon Miss Elizabeth died at the age of 42. Today, we present articles from the PWTorch Newsletter covering her death, Lex Luger's involvement, which led to Luger spending time in prison before turning his life around, and how this was a watershed moment for WWE to begin taking responsibility for helping clean up the wrestling industry.

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PWTorch Newsletter #757 excerpts
Cover-Dated May 10, 2003

Top News: Elizabeth Hulette, longtime wrestling valet, dies at 42

Elizabeth Hulette, known in pro wrestling as Miss Elizabeth, died Thursday morning, likely from recreational drug usage, at age 42. An autopsy was performed Friday, but results were not conclusive. Toxicology test results won't be available for about two months.

Hulette was rushed by ambulance from the Cobb County, Ga. townhome of Lawrence Pfohl, known in pro wrestling as Lex Luger, around 5:30 a.m. Thursday morning. Boyfriend Pfohl accompanied her to the Kennestone Hospital. She was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at the hospital. Authorities do not believe foul play was involved in her death, which was an issue given that Pfohl had been arrested on April 19 for allegedly beating Hulette.

Hulette's funeral was arranged by her family. No public announcement was made and no wrestling associates were notified or invited.

Hulette gained national fame as a WWF sex symbol in the mid-'80s when she accompanied her then-husband Randy Savage to ringside for his matches. She worked for the WWF from 1985 to 1992.

She re-entered the pro wrestling industry in January 1996 and remained with WCW for several years, during which time she and Pfohl became romantically involved. They continued to see each other after WCW was bought out by the WWF. Hulette was well-liked in the wrestling industry, seen as a soft-spoken, gentle, amiable person.

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PWTorch Newsletter Cover Story

Neither had worked for WWE for years, but the high-profile death of Elizabeth Hulette (Miss Elizabeth) and arrest on drug charges of Larry Pfohl (Lex Luger) could have major impact on WWE. Both incidents also raise questions regarding what is wrong with the wrestling industry and is Vince McMahon or his WWE organization culpable.

Elizabeth's death, if related to usage of various drugs including perhaps the widely used and very dangerous calming-buzz-producing GHB, isn't the fault of WWE or the wrestling industry. It is the fault of the culture that is part of WWE and the wrestling industry.

Luger's arrest on drug charges may be directly related to WWE and the wrestling industry if he had been supplying drugs to WWE wrestlers. WWE no longer tests its independent contractors for drug usage, and hasn't for years. They instituted drug testing in the early '90s only after over a year of intense media scrutiny. Dr. George Zahorian was convicted of distribution of drugs in WWE locker rooms, a practice many testified was out in the open and obvious for anyone paying attention, including WWE officials. The drug testing was halted during a stretch of good business for WWE after media scrutiny had stopped years later. WWE declared in a press release that their testing policy had worked and there was no longer a need to spent money on expensive tests.

If Luger was selling drugs to WWE wrestlers - which is pure speculation, but by no means far-fetched considering his connections to various wrestlers and his ownership of an Atlanta gym frequented by many wrestlers, including some based in the Atlanta-area - WWE will once again likely have to answer for their drug testing procedures.

WWE has built a strong track record of caring for its own. WWE officials scoff at any suggestion that they aren't doing everything they can to quietly and sternly clean up the acts of any wrestlers they believe are abusing drugs. There indeed have been numerous cases in recent years of WWE paying for drug treatment for wrestlers, taking wrestlers off the travel schedule, and eventually severing ties with wrestlers who refuse to get or remain clean. WWE does not openly or privately encourage drug use. Instead, the system creates incentives.

That won't matter to the mainstream media, and thus advertisers, if their wrestlers are tied to Pfohl's drugs. WWE, at a time when business is in a rut, could find themselves in p.r. recovery mode. There are few educated observers of WWE wrestlers who would draw any conclusion other than the obvious - current WWE wrestlers are using muscle-enhancing drugs to look the way they do. Many wrestlers have been on record talking about the benefits of steroid use in terms of keeping up with the grueling WWE schedule and dealing with nagging injuries. WWE has decided such drug usage is either not their business or not a problem since they don't test for such substances.

Steroids, though, don't kill wrestlers in the short-term, but instead they have a long-term effect, the full extent of which isn't well known yet. What is killing wrestlers, from Curt Hennig to Rick Rude to Louie Spicolli, are recreational drugs, such as GHB, cocaine, and various prescription pills. GHB is difficult to test for, as are prescription pills. They don't lead to better physiques or even better performance in the ring. WWE doesn't inherently create an environment where such usage is vital or even helpful to any wrestlers' job. Wrestlers take such drugs because it feels good, because they're away from home for days on end, and because it's been part of the culture for decades and inertia leads to each generation believing that's simply what wrestlers do to pass the time.

The numerous drug problems in WWE cannot fall under one simple banner with one simple solution. Elizabeth's death and Pfohl's drug arrests aren't a manifestation of an easy-to-fix problem, but instead are just a seemingly inevitable side effect of the lifestyle that the pro wrestling industry breeds, in part due to callous indifference, in part due to a renegade attitude by its performers, in part due to financial incentives, in part due to loneliness or despair, in part due to riches and excess free time, in part due to greed and gluttony, in part because too many good people in wrestling chose to look the other way rather than confront the high-risk lifestyles of their colleagues.

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Mitchell Memo

By Bruce Mitchell, Torch columnist

The news about Elizabeth Hulette dropped like a terrible rock into the professional wrestling lake. The rock sent immediate ripples through the people who loved her, to her family, to the people who knew her day to day, to the people who worked with her, those people who knew in an intimate way the waste her death was. Those ripples traveled outward to her fans, those millions who watched her in her heyday, when her tentative glamour made her the wrestling woman of her generation. They may have forgotten for a while, but now they remembered Miss Elizabeth again. Some were bewildered. Many of them figured it was just wrestling.

For Larry Pfohl, her companion for many years, the ripples deepened, doubled, tripled, bounced off each other...

It's impossible to truly understand the combination of grief, remorse, and abject fear Pfohl must be experiencing since early Thursday morning. The ripples caused by the death of the woman he loved led the police to find his enormous cache of illegal drugs. How could the law understand that this was more than thousands of pills, this was the foundation of a man's life? The pills gave him the thing he was always proudest of, the thing he made millions on, his beautiful body. Now they had inexorably cost him the woman he loved, and more than likely his freedom for years to come.

It didn't have to happen. Pfohl had made his money, enough to last him the rest of his life if he was smart. No one ever said Pfohl wasn't smart. He had been on a high priced scholarship from the beginning, because body marks like Vince McMahon had looked at those peaks and those lats and smelled money. He never quite graduated to becoming the ticket-selling star promoters paid him to be, because fans picked up on his aloof, above-it-all personality. Still, because of that body, because of those pills, he got chance after chance, big contract after big contract.

Pfohl learned early on what doctors said about drugs wasn't always true. He was better off teaching himself. Look at how well he learned. I mean, you could see it.

Because of his style in the ring, where he let his "genetic gifts" speak for him, he wasn't as banged up as others of his generation. He should have been home free to live the good life.

Old habits, though, are hard to break. Liz Hulette needed help dealing with time as it passed her by. Old habits can cement two people in a relationship that can last a lifetime.

Now those terrible ripples travel ever outward into the pro wrestling world. Amidst the dozens of eulogies on the internet, some sincere, the most telling line was on WWE.com. In a brief, four line statement WWE found room to point out the following: "Miss Hulette played the very popular character of Miss Elizabeth in WWE from 1985 to 1992."

Their cowardice stood out. The real message was clear, clearer than the oh-so-brief grief: It was eleven years ago, how could this be their fault?

The terrible ripples travel outward. Did Larry Pfohl, a fixture in the Atlanta wrestling world for many years, operate in a vacuum? Or was he just a player in a game that is still going on? Who else is playing in his league?

Pfohl may very well not be alone in his fear.

Where did the pills come from? Where were they supposed to go? Would law enforcement be satisfied if the trail ended with Pfohl?

The ripples spread on and on...

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