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VIP - MITCHELL'S MEMO: The Legend of Moolah, Ross's Contract Quietly Runs Out, Congressional Fade-away (PWTorch #997) Nov 7, 2007 - 3:29:21 PM
VIP EXCLUSIVE - Early-release article from PWTorch Newsletter #997...
BRUCE MITCHELL FEATURE
Original Headline: "The Legend of Moolah, Jim Ross' Contract Quietly Runs Out, The Congressional Fade-away"
Original Publish Date: November 7, 2007
Pro Wrestling Torch Newsletter #997
WWE aired an amazing tribute on Raw to one of the legends of the professional wrestling business, "Fabulous Moolah" Lillian Ellison. It's even more amazing to think of all that Ellison achieved doing none of things that other legends had to do. Moolah never drew a house, she was never more than a mediocre worker for her time, she was an afterthought in the only memorable matches of her decades-long career, and she spent the last ten years of her career being degraded by the company that supposedly respected her so much in creepy sexual "skits."
Moolah wasn't the pioneer of women's wrestling, either; that was the much more talented Mildred Burke - who certainly did draw big houses and was highly regarded for her wrestling ability. She was as advertised, though. As Jerry Lawler pointed out on Raw, Lillian Ellison was about the money - her own. She gained control of women's wrestling at the same time she gained control of the title belt and ran her own mini-monopoly within the larger territorial NWA/AWA/WWWF monopoly that enforced the boundaries of the business then.
If you were a woman wrestler back then, Fabulous Moolah booked you - for a substantial cut. If you didn't like it, well, that limited your options substantially. Women's wrestling, something that had been a real success in the Burke years, stagnated. It's never really recovered.
There was more to Moolah than literally keeping women down on the farm, and it explains why she always had a job with the McMahon family. Moolah toured all the territories, knew all the talent and gossip. Guess who she shared all that information with?
-There's been little or no buzz about this, probably because that's how both sides want it, but the contract of......
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