By Jeff Rosenberg

Growing up with two older sisters, I spent my young childhood amidst a constant struggle for gender superiority. Whether it was me being dragged to a New Kids on the Block concert as our group Chanukah present in 1988 or my parents getting my sisters back with a shared Sega Genesis the following winter, there were cataclysmic results whenever our two worlds collided. They had their things, I had mine and little was shared between the two. We fought for everything from cereal choice to radio stations. Nothing however, was a bigger struggle than the ever-elusive remote control. We both wanted to pick what we watched at all times and refused to back down. I wanted Thundercats; they wanted Punky Brewster.

So imagine my shock and dismay, the first time I ever heard the loud aggressive screams of my older sisters watching wrestling. You know that wrestling scream; it’s unavoidable, like no other sound in the world and not meant to come from the mouths of young girls. As an avid follower of Superfly Jimmy Snuka and Jake the Snake, I was a wrestling nut like every other suburban prepubescent male in the late-80’s. I owned hundreds of wrestling toys and could recite the line-ups of every pay-per-view event from SummerSlam to Wrestlemania. That said, never in my wildest dreams did I expect my sisters to share in my love nor did I want them to. I had wrestling; they had Rainbow Brite. This was a problem and it had to be stopped.

As I turned the corner into the TV room however, I couldn’t have ever imagined what I actually saw that day. Take a look for yourself:

Someone, somewhere had decided that a wrestling league needed to be developed that featured Woman wrestling (and rapping) and my sisters were obsessed. 

The “show” ultimately was less wrestling and more ridiculous storylines, the worst of which involved one woman ripping another woman’s arm off and giving it back to her the following week as a present.  The quality of the program didn’t matter however, my sisters were making me question my love for the manliest of manly things – wrestling. This show was slowly ruining my life.

Thankfully, Milli Vanilli become all the rage soon after and my sisters quickly forgot this aberration into my world of wrestling and childhood bravado. The show was cancelled, American Gladiators came out and everything was once again right in the gender-defined Rosenberg household.