No Gimmick! Women in the ring before GLOW
“The Kentucky Wildcat” Jeanetta Collins working the ring in the early 1950s. Photo courtesy Jeanetta Collins.
With all the interest around the Netflix show GLOW, a drama about the 1980s TV show, I thought some of you might want to learn about women wrestlers in the ring before GLOW. Women like “The Kentucky Wildcat” (Jeanetta Collins) were trained wrestlers and their characters reflected the social realities of their time.
My 2010 documentary, Rovers, Wrestlers & Stars, on KET-PBS, features the story of Jeanetta Collins, a woman wrestler from Kentucky who wrestled with the best: Cora Coombs, Sweet Georgia Brown, Mae Weston, Shirley Stimple, Ruth Waters and many more women of the ring. Learn about life on the road, resistance to racial segregation before Civil Rights, and wrestling romance.