The Worst Wrestling Promotion in History

When Sky launched their television service via the Astra satellite in 1989, not only were we given four channels from Sky themselves, but various other channels catering for a variety of tastes. Some of these channels would only last a couple of years or so, and only a handful of them made it on to the Sky Digital platform.

While Sky achieved great success with the WWF, other channels had hit-and-miss affairs with companies such as the NWA, AWA, USWA, GWF, and others.

One particular channel that experimented with wrestling was Lifestyle. During the week they aimed their programming at a female demographic, but at weekends they looked for a family audience, and as Sky's family audience was glued to WWF shows, Lifestyle had a wrestling show of their own, and in my opinion, it was the worst wrestling show I have ever seen.

Founded by David MacLaine in 1986, the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, or GLOW, came to us each week from the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. Each week the show began with the roster dancing in the ring, in full wrestling attire, rapping along to an early eighties synth-pop backing track.

The roster included such less-than-memorable wrestlers, and I use the term wrestlers rather loosely, as Americana, the All-American beauty, Matilda the Hun, a man, or should that be woman, mountain of a wrestler, a Russian spy by the name of KGB, a punk tag-team called Hollywood and Vine, Mountain Fuji, another large lady, and Amy, the farmer's daughter, who was rather lacking between the ears.

So what females wrestlers of the day portrayed these roles? Well, the majority of these roles were filled by strippers and mud wrestlers from the Los Angeles area. In fact, the best of the bunch was a girl known as Tina Ferrari. Ferrari was played by Lisa Moretti, who achieved a great deal of success in WWE as Ivory. I think it's safe to say that GLOW wasn't one of the highlights of her career.

So, given the fact that nearly all the roster had minimal training, what were the matches like? Pretty damn awful. Apart from the aforementioned Tina Ferrari, most of the girls couldn't tell a wrist lock from a wrist watch.

But the matches weren't the worst thing on the show. Top of that list were the backstage skits, although when I use the word skit, don't think of the WWE's current skits.

MacLaine, as producer of the show, seemed more inspired by 1960's comedy shows such as Rowan and Martin's Laugh In. The backstage skits weren't used to further story lines, they were awful comedy segments, performed by the wrestlers, with awful jokes, even worse punch lines, and with obviously canned laughter to end the segment.

Quite what MacLaine was thinking is anybody's guess. You have to wonder just who his target audience was. It certainly wasn't the die hard wrestling fan who had been brought up on Flair and Funk classics. MacLaine was aiming his product at the sports entertainment market. The only problem was the show wasn't sporting, or very entertaining.

Having founded GLOW in 1986, MacLaine sold the promotion to the Riviera Hotel a couple of years later. The television show continued in America until 1992, when it was cancelled. I'm told that the GLOW promotion still exists today, although I was unable to find any recent information on them while researching this article.

When one thinks of women's wrestling today, we often see complaints and criticisms of the WWE's women's division. Wee see criticisms of the way the women are portrayed, and of the quality of the matches.

But when you compare the WWE women's division to GLOW, there really is no contest. Compared to GLOW, recent matches involving Trash Stratus Molly Holly, Victoria and their comrades are five star classics. It's been said that the WWE damages women's wrestling. GLOW did this nearly twenty years ago.

For me, GLOW is probably the worst promotion I have ever seen, and may well be the worst promotion in the history of professional wrestling.


I understand that GLOW videos and DVD's can actually be purchased from Amazon. If my piece here has convinced you to part with your money to see if GLOW really was that bad, then that's your choice. But while you're at it, I've got a bridge in London I'm trying to sell. Any takers?