When David McLane was 13, he was taken to a professional wrestling match by a friend and fell in love with the theatre he witnessed: “the lights, the colours, the characters, the names, the battles.”
The name McLane might not be familiar to you but his deeds probably are. He’s the chap on whom Bash Howard is based in the Netflix series GLOW: Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. The portrayal is not strictly accurate, the real McLane is keen to stress. For instance, in real life, there was never a machine walking around in his bedroom dispensing drugs.
Jeanie Buss and David McLane.Credit:WOW Television Enterprises
The true bit is that McLane realised, while he was still in college, that female wrestling was (a) totally awesome and (b) a tremendous opportunity — for him and the women involved. He indeed helped launch the real-life GLOW. It went pretty well for a while.
“But the partners that I had in GLOW — we didn’t all have the same vision,” McLane says.
He sold his share in 1992, and had another crack in 2000 but 9/11 happened. During that second run, he was lucky enough to have in the audience a woman called Jeanie Buss. Daughter of sports exec and philanthropist Jerry Buss, she grew up in the business, managing a range of sports teams until in 2013 she took over as controlling owner of the LA Lakers. In 2020, the Lakers won the NBA championship – the first to do so under a female manager. Buss knew how to do sports.
She also came of age in the early days of the United States’ Title IX, a piece of federal legislation that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in any publicly funded educational setting. In high school, she was the beneficiary of it. And as a successful woman in sports management, she felt a duty to raise up female athletes.
“Being a woman in sport, I knew that people would look to me and say: how are you investing in women and sports?” Buss says. She was also keenly aware that while Title IX meant talented female athletes were finally eligible for the kinds of sports scholarships that gave them access to tertiary education, once they graduated college, things fell off a cliff.
“Unless you’re going into the WNBA or becoming a tennis player — or maybe a professional golfer — there’s nowhere to go after college,” Buss says. “There are no pathways, no places to showcase your talents, your athleticism, and no way to earn a living.”
So she was on the lookout for a way to create that kind of showcase. McLane’s women’s wrestling seemed like it might be it. “Wrestling is one of those sports that’s been around for decades and proven to be a model that will sustain itself,” she says. “Wrestling fans are some of the best fans on the earth.”
And when Buss and McLane finally landed a global distribution deal with CBS Paramount, they knew they had the package to make women’s wrestling a going concern.
Australian-born wrestler Genesis.
For Buss, it’s an overtly feminist project. And she and McLane are both proud of the fact that their Women of Wrestling – WOW – is diverse and inclusive. Dropping the “Gorgeous” is not just a gesture — this is definitely not all hot chicks in skimpy costumes. All body shapes and sizes, all ethnicities and a surprising range of ages are part of the mix. Buss wanted to make sure the WOW athletes provided healthy role models to women and girls – and to boys.
“One of my role models, somebody who’s had a lot of influence on me, is Billie Jean King,” Buss says. “And she had an interesting quote after the Lakers won the NBA championship in 2020, and I’m standing there with our team. She said: This is an important moment because now people can see that women can lead men. And that’s part of what we’re trying to show with WOW.”
Genesis, one of a large Australian contingent competing in WOW, says: “Everyone knows wrestling’s always been dominated by men. That’s why WOW is so cool. Before, [women’s wrestling] was just a sideshow for male entertainment.”
Born and raised in Nhulunbuy on the Gove Peninsula in the Northern Territory, Genesis (it’s the only name she goes by – publicly, at least) played amateur Aussie rules and taught herself martial arts before first going to boarding school, and then moving to Los Angeles to study film and pursue a career in entertainment. She saw an ad for the tryouts for WOW and figured with her martial arts background and her interest in performance, she was a good fit.
She says it’s exceptionally rigorous, physically. Not much about the holds, lifts and slams is inauthentic.
“Cardio is really important. You need the stamina,” she says. “You definitely have to be strong. You have to be able to lift another human being over your head. And you do get hurt.”
Likewise the “characters” and the women’s stories are fundamentally true. “When we’re in the ring, we’re amplified versions of who we really are,” Genesis says. “It is entertainment. We’re there to put on a show. But the stories are genuine. It’s real people. It’s real stories. It’s heightened in the ring, for sure, but the emotions are all real.”
She describes the show as “high octane … it’s big. We do big things. We do dangerous things. And we do it because we love it, we want to win, and we love the entertainment side of it.”
Jeanie Buss says wrestling is for sports fans who love storytelling. “Tune in to see which characters resonate with you,” she says. “You’ll engage with the characters in a way you wouldn’t with any other sport.”
David McLane says while most of the moves you see in the ring are the same as you’d see in Olympic wrestling, the classic Greco-Roman discipline, “the difference is the theatrical presentation of professional wrestling. It’s more show business”.
It’s more Australian, he adds, shamelessly if egregiously playing to the crowd. “When you think of Australia, you think of the ocean, you think of the beautiful pristine beaches, and you think of people who love life and have fun and smile. And that’s what you think when you think WOW women of wrestling.”
Well. Kind of. “Greco wrestling,” he adds, “just isn’t as fun.” That, at least, is no exaggeration.
Women of Wrestling is on 10Play.
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