Hart Murmurs #100
by Bruce Hart March 27, 2018
Greetings. This marks the 100th edition of Hart Murmurs – I’d like to extend thanks to my friends at Pro Wresting Powerhouse (PWP Nation), in particular, Eron Ramadanov and Jay Alletto – both of have been great to work with and who do a tremendous job of helping to keep wrestling fans informed and entertained, all the while maintaining the highest standards of journalistic integrity.
The past couple of weeks, I’ve been watching, in amazement and amusement, the train-wreck regarding The Fabulous Moolah WrestleMania Women’s Battle Royal. All things considered, those orchestrating the schematics inWWE head office, probably couldn’t have orchestrated things any worse if they had tried.
For whatever it’s worth, I’ll endeavor to render my take on it here and now.
First off, I don’t know why the WWE saw fit to even have a thirty woman battle royal to the card at WrestleMania in the first place, given that they already had: a women’s world title showdown (Charlotte and Asuka); another female superstar, Ronda Rousey, making her much heralded debut; not to mention a WWE World Heavyweight Title match, a Universal Title match, an Intercontinental Title match, a United States Title match, a WWE Cruiserweight Title match, tag title matches, the Hall of Fame inductions and assorted other hype and hoopla on the card.
To my way of thinking, taking all the extra divas and throwing them into some hastily assembled battle royal that nobody was really clamouring to see in the first place, was about like taking all the leftovers in the kitchen and throwing it on a big platter and serving it up, in addition to the main course, for Easter dinner – just needless overkill.
Aside from WrestleMania not needing a women’s battle royal anyway, I should note that Moolah, being a raunchy old heel, wasn’t all that popular with the fans in the first place, nor, from a behind the scenes perspective, was she held in particularly high regard by most of the wrestlers and others in the wrestling community, male or female, anyway
Beyond that, and perhaps most egregious, is the fact that most of the allegations that have recently risen to the surface about her ongoing mistreatment of girl wrestlers have been fairly common knowledge within the wrestling business for decades.
As such, it’s surprising and hard to fathom how the powers that be in the WWE could have chosen to ignore all of that and proceed with the Fabulous Moolah Battle Royal in the first place.
To my way of thinking that would have been about the equivalent of the Academy Awards people choosing to give out the Harvey Weinstein Humanitarian Award at the Oscars.
The last I heard was that the WWE had decided to remove Moolah’s name from the Battle Royal, but was still planning to go ahead with the women’s battle royal, anyway. All things considered, if I were them, I would just scrap the whole ill-conceived match from WrestleMania altogether, which would amount to addition by subtraction.
On that note, I’ll call this a wrap, but will look forward to catching up with you next week for more news and views.
Bruce Hart
