PWP Nation’s Zak Fellows continues his rundown of this year’s WWE Hall of Fame inductees, examining if they deserve their spot among greatness.
As the only woman to graduate from Devastation Inc. manager Skandor Akbar’s school, Jacqueline Moore began her wrestling career in 1988 wrestling for World Class Championship Wrestling, taking on the mantle of Sweet Georgia Brown. WCCW was not the only promotion that served as a stage to the beginnings of her career though: She branched out competing in Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling in Japan as well as the female exclusive promotions the Ladies Professional Wrestling Association and Women’s Pro Wrestling.
In 1991, Jacqueline would make her biggest leap into the United States Wrestling Association where she would find her first major successes. Under the name of Miss Texas, she became the inaugural USWA Women’s champion defeating Dirty White Girl, a name I can’t make up, in a tournament final on March 2, 1992 and in 1993, she achieved another first in women’s history when she became the first female to be included in Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s ‘acclaimed’ top 500 list.
Between 1991 and 1996, Texas would become a fourteen time holder of the USWA Women’s Championship as well as a one-time Universal Wrestling Federation Women’s champion, also competing in the final days of Smoky Mountain Wrestling under the name of Sgt Rock.
After a brief stint in WCW where she would manage Kevin Sullivan and Harlem Heat, Jacqueline would make her next big move. Originally brought to the attention of the WWE in 1993 as a part of their then ongoing partnership with the USWA, Jacqueline would make her debut for the company for real in 1998 in the wake of Sable’s rise in popularity.
Aligning herself with “Marvelous” Marc Mero, she would begin a feud with Sable even going on to become the first WWE Women’s championship since Alundra Blayze’s defection to WCW on September, 1998. Much like Tony Atlas and Rocky Johnson and Ahmed Johnson, Jacqueline holds the distinction of being the first African-American to hold a WWE Championship in this case the Women’s title.
Jacqueline would go on to form an all-women’s faction in 1999 with Terri Runnels and Ryan Shamrock christening them the Pretty Mean Sisters taking advantage of the Crash TV style and appeal of the WWE at the time to create an act that got people to hate them and generated babyface reactions for whomever they interacted with such as D’Lo Brown, Mark Henry and Shawn Stasiak.
In her final years with WWE Jacqueline would seemingly go all over the map: She would become the Women’s Champion again before becoming a frequent challenger and presence in the Women’s division that was grooming future legends such as Trish Stratus and Lita. She would become a referee and trainer before achieving another first: defeating Chavo Guerrero to become the first woman to hold the Cruiserweight championship under the WWE banner in 2004.
After departing from the WWE in 2004 she would wrestle on the Independent circuit before joining TNA wrestling (yes, TNA is fair game in this series) in 2004 going on to become the valet of the villainous Cowboy James Storm in 2007. Calling herself the Pride of Tennessee, Jacqueline would split her time from managing Storm and his future tag team partner Robert Roode and helping usher in the acclaimed TNA Knockout’s Division departing from the company in November of 2011. And this year, she will be enshrined into the WWE Hall of Fame.
So, what is Jacqueline Moore’s legacy?
Jacqueline is an example of a wrestler above a persona. While she did get involved in character based stories, mainly as it relates to the PMS stuff, effort was made to make her be the wrestling aspect of everything she did. The athlete was the important part of Jacqueline and that’s what ultimately granted her something of a longer life span and made her less interchangeable than some of the other women that have been active before, during and after her career.
But how does this translate to a legacy?
Yes, she has held Women’s championships, obtained firsts against both sides of the gender coin and she has longevity. But what is the example she can set and be a lesson to prospective wrestlers. Triple H said the same thing in regards to Kane and I’m going to apply it to Jacqueline: she’s the constant.
Because of the general life cycle in professional wrestling and the roster of a promotion being in a constant flux, very few wrestlers can have careers without reinventing themselves to help maintain appeal to an audience. You have to be extremely talented to be able to stay the same and still be perceived in the same manner. To be a constant, you have to be able to be the same person and face in an evolving time: Kane was this when, despite physical appearance changes and an increasingly more ridiculous back story, at the core he was still the same character and wrestler.
The same could be said for Jacqueline: From promotion to promotion, she was the same wrestler and personality almost unchanged having made herself to be as good as she was to be placed in and out of situations with people immediately buying into her.
Jacqueline is a wrestler above a character as opposed to Trish, Lita and even Chyna: she didn’t have the same amount of charisma or lasting appeal as those three that allowed them to become universally popular or universally hated. But she made up for it in her ability that allowed her to achieve longevity and allowed her to be treated as a mechanic to guide her lesser experienced opponents to improve upon themselves. And her ability will be rewarded when she joins the WWE Hall of Fame this year… and then we can get the rest of her PMS mates next year.
[Zak Fellows had to end with something about PMS.]
James Storm was my introduction to her for the record. Got to love that drunken cowboy, right?
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