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The Cauliflower Alley Club is pleased to announce that the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling and creator Matt Cimber will be honored at the upcoming CAC Reunion with a 2017 Women’s Wrestling Award!  We are hoping over 30 of the original GLOW cast will be in attendance this coming May to help receive the award.  Here is some background on the GLOW girls, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, also known as GLOW or G.L.O.W., is a women’s professional wrestling promotion begun in 1986 (the pilot was filmed in December 1985) and continued in various forms after it left television. Colorful characters, strong women, and over-the-top comedy sketches were integral to the series’ success. Most of the performers were actresses, models, dancers, and/or stunt women hoping to get into show business through wrestling.

GLOW was created by Matt Cimber as an evolution of a somewhat different original concept by David B. McLane. That began as an aftermath of Jackie Stallone‘s physical fitness gym for women only, Barbarella’s.  Mando Guerrero trained all of the girls, initially. After they moved the show to Las Vegas Ninotchka took control over training the new girls.[1]

The syndicated GLOW TV show was produced for four seasons (1986–1990) from the Riviera Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. Seasons 3 and 4 were in fact, filmed at a former warehouse building approximately three miles east of the Riviera hotel which is currently a Harley-Davidson outlet. During the casting for the pilot, not all of the women were taking it seriously, so Mando Guerrero put one woman in a submission hold and made her cry.[1] They cast twelve girls for the show and trained them for six weeks prior to the shoot.[1] They wrestled approximately eight matches per show, which eventually was sold.[1] Some of the women moved to Las Vegas to continue working with the promotion.[1] The show itself differed from Vince McMahon‘s World Wrestling Federation in that they had actual seasons where some wrestlers were dropped, changed, or added before the new season began. Each season consisted of 26 episodes that were each rerun once to complete the year, with a total of 104 episodes produced.

Steve Blance was the senior referee in season two before becoming GLOW’s “commissioner” in seasons three and four. He was always the recipient of a GLOW Girl beatdown in season two. Johnny Cafarella (as “Johnny C.”) hosted seasons 3 and 4, was the figurehead owner (buying David McLane’s “interest” in a storyline) and also served as company manager after the departure of McLane in 1987. Jackie Stallone (Sylvester Stallone‘s mother) was the figurehead owner and manager of the Good Girls, and Aunt Kitty (Kitty Burke) was the manager for the Bad Girls.

Each of the GLOW performers had her own rap song (personalized lyrics using the same backing track). It was shown on videotape prior to that wrestler’s match. Similar to other wrestling promotions’ use of wrestler-specific entrance themes, this gimmick may have been influenced by the Chicago Bears‘ “Super Bowl Shuffle“.

Read more about the GLOW girls here!

Matt Cimber is a producer, director and screenwriter.  He began his career in the early 60s directing off-Broadway plays including works by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams and the US premieres of the Jean Cocteau trilogy. During his theater years, Cimber adapted Burning Bright by John Steinbeck which introduced Sandy Dennis who went on to win an Academy Award for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).

Matt made his cinematic directorial debut (credited on-screen like Matteo Ottaviano)[1][5] with the offbeat Single Room Furnished (1966), which was also Jayne Mansfield‘s last movie. Cimber directed Man and Wife in 1969 and He and She the following year. He followed this movie with the film The Sexually Liberated Female (1970), which was based on a best-selling book The Sensuous Female by J.

Of course these are only a few of the productions he was involved in.  Check out his IMDB page for a complete list!

Then in the late 80s, Cimber created and directed the successful TV series GLOW: Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (1986). The show lasted for four seasons and was broadcast on over 100 station in the US.

The CAC is excited to honor GLOW’s heritage and impact on professional wrestling.