Medium: Film
Title: American Angels: Baptism of Blood
Bio: Granddaughter of famous old school grappler, George “Killer” Kane, Lisa was a scrappy underdog who made her American Angels debut in the main event against Magnificent Mimi. There were rumors of backstage heat on Lisa for her close involvement with Angels commentator, Diamond Dave, who was said to be Mimi’s real-life boyfriend.
Signature Move: The Snap.
Tag: Glow
American Angels: Baptism of Blood (1989)
With Netflix recently announcing that they’ve ordered a comedy series based on everybody’s favorite female wrestling league from the 80’s: Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW), I figured I’d finally get around to reviewing the quintessential 80’s women’s wrestling movie, American Angels: Baptism of Blood.
Whoa, Nellie!
Whoa, Nellie! is a 3-issue series that spawned from Jaime, Gilbert, and Mario Hernandez’ indie comic, Love and Rockets. It focuses on the friendship of main characters Xochitl “La Terible” Nava and Gina Bravo and the world of women’s professional wrestling. If you dug the documentary Lipstick & Dynamite, you’ll definitely appreciate Whoa, Nellie! If you’ve only seen the GLOW documentary, you still might like the comic book. But it definitely draws its inspiration from the early days of Fabulous Moolah and Mildred Burke. Sorry dudes, no petite models with fake boobs. Just full-figured women beating the crap out of each other.
Mama’s Family
“Mama Mania”
Season 4, Episode 9
11/21/1987
While Mama’s Family will never make any top ten sitcom lists, or be revered for breaking any ground as a sitcom or, hell, for being an entertaining sitcom for that matter, it was still a sitcom I regularly watched as a kid. Which will tell you that I spent most of my childhood without cable TV. Upholding the long-standing tradition of working class/white trash family sitcoms, Mama’s Family also happened to have a wrestling episode that involved Harper matriarch, Thelma, and daughter-in-law Naomi competing inside the ring. The show also decided to go the much more realistic route of having their TV characters, that have never wrestled before, win their matches against seasoned pros. And yet, we still wonder why the WWE books celebrities the way they do.
Roseanne
“Roseanne-Feld”
Season 9, Episode 20
3/4/1997
At first, I didn’t get the title to this episode and wondered if it had to do with the wrestling storyline. It didn’t. Having watched it, I realized this episode was pretty much about nothing and then it hit me. This was basically a throwaway episode and apparently a dig at Seinfeld. Only problem is that as good as Roseanne was, their later seasons sucked and even with Seinfeld being a show about “nothing” there were way more great episodes than there were bad ones. I guess, what I’m really trying to say is, I wish there was more wrestling to this episode.
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