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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.
After having heard Buddy Landel on Colt Cabana’s Art of Wrestling podcast recently, and getting to know more about him other than my limited knowledge of his cup of coffee that was his WWF run, I realized he was an entertaining story teller and another tragic “what could’ve been” wrestling tale, and not just some poor man’s Ric Flair. So in honor of Buddy Landel, I figured I’d post this brief cameo of his in the movie Box of Moonlight. RIP “Nature Boy”.
“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.
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