Former WWE Divas Molly Holly and Lisa Marie Varon (known as Victoria during her career) shared their experiences with rookie Divas, and what it was like to pitch ideas to the McMahons.
DS Shin of Ring the Belle sat down with the legends to discuss fan-voted top five moments of each woman’s career.
Shin asked Holly and Varon what it was like to work with rookie Divas, after a wave of new talent emerged in the division with no previous wrestling experience. Varon spoke on the expectations Divas were made to uphold, and how they got new talent over.
“It’s a tough sport. I always say to fans that come up to me and want to wrestle, go to college or play golf or something like that. It’s a tough, tough business. Only the tough survive. You’re fighting for your own spot. You have to be thin, you have to be pretty, you can’t wrinkle, you can’t get gray hair, you always have to have a smile on your face.
I think our forte was working with the rookies and making them look good; better than they are. I mean, we would sacrifice our form and everything like that just to make them get the big pop, and people to cheer for them and boo us.”
The former champions also discussed creative struggles women in WWE had to face, and how it felt pitching to the McMahon family.
Varon participated in the first-ever women’s steel cage match, which aired on Raw in November of 2003. She explained how the women wanted to make the match hardcore, but faced discrimination.
“Interesting fact about this gigging. We gig our forehead to bleed sometimes, or we have the ref gig us, or something like that, and I wanted to gig [during the match]. Fit Finlay goes, ‘No, no, no, you’re not allowed to.’ And I go ‘What? We’re doing a cage match, though.’ You know? We were hardcore at the time. I would never do it now, but at the time I was like, ‘Oh, were so hardcore and we can do anything the guys do.’ We didn’t think it through. I went to Vince to ask him and he goes, ‘No, thank you Victoria for wanting to do it, but no one wants to see a Diva bleed.’
I did tell Lita, ‘Throw me as hard as you can against the cage so I can get color gigging, naturally.’ And I didn’t know how to do it, so I went ‘thunk’ and I got a big knot.”
Molly Holly faced her own creative barriers. Holly faced Victoria at WrestleMania 20 in the infamous “hair match” for the WWE Women’s Championship, with the added stipulation that if Holly lost, she would have to shave her head bald. Victoria won the match.
Holly spoke on how the championship match almost never happened.
“I was the champion, and the writers told me that there was only room for one match, girls’ match, at WrestleMania. They were going to do like a pillow fight, or a mud thing with the Divas. I was like, what? Like, I’m the champ and I don’t get to defend my title at WrestleMania? I was really devastated, so I thought, ‘I’ve got to come up with something that makes them change their minds.’
So, I put a bald cap on and had my photo taken. Then I made a booklet with a bunch of different storylines that could go either way, like, with showing my head getting shaved. I presented it to Stephanie McMahon. I presented it to some of the writers, and said, ‘I’m willing to shave my head, can I please be on WrestleMania?’ And sure enough, they came back to me couple days later and said, ‘All right, we’re going to let you get your head shaved at WrestleMania.'”
With the Royal Rumble only a few days away, fans have speculated as to who the remaining nine unannounced women’s Royal Rumble match entrants might be. Varon and Holly are two names that are frequently in the discussion. Varon spells out how WWE returns usually happen.
“It is not my decision. They have to call and invite you. I still do the indies and a lot of signings at Comic Cons. A lot of people think I have a choice. The company has to decide. It’s out of our hands.”
Check out the entire interview with the Divas above, and be sure to visit Ring the Belle’s YouTube channel here.
Watch to see if the legends make an appearance in the women’s Royal Rumble match on Sunday, Jan. 27, live on the WWE Network at 7 p.m. EST.
