Shot at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, this hour-long 1986 show was extremely popular in urban areas, airing on the weekends. Outlandish women wrestlers would go at it in the same fashion as those trashy mud wrestlers from the Hollywood strip clubs. In fact, many of the 'Ladies' in the ring were current or former LA strippers and mud wrestlers.
If you wanted a production to be as demeaning to women as possible you couldn't go any further; some sociologists might correlate the growing rate of women in the workplace and the high ratings for this type of entertainment but we'll leave that to them..
All the contestants had their one-dimensional schtick with names like The Soul Patrol, Debbie Debutante, Heavy Metal, Palestina, The Housewives, Suzy Spirit, Jungle Woman and Spanish Red. They played these broad, stereotypical roles to the hilt but the main attraction was the preponderance of bronzed legs, nearly naked butts in the air with scantily clad women lying on top of one another. There was no internet porn then!
G.L.O.W. was one of the hottest syndication properties in the 1980s even if it was widely slammed by those critics who always howl at low brow entertainment.
Fans really looked forward to the yearly Battle Royale where 21 girls would converge on the mat for an old-fashioned free for all.
Johnny Cafarella tells us; "GLOW is not defunct. "GLOW Entertainment is not in any way associated with David McLane - he sold his interest in GLOW to the Riviera Hotel back in 1987. I hosted the program from 1987-1992. Our group, GLOW Entertainment, purchased the property from the Riviera in June, 2001."
A documentary film entitled GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling was completed in late 2011.
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