It’s always Sunny in California.
In the 1980’s, the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW) spotlighted women in wrestling. Amongst the originals was Sunny The California Girl. On the most recent episode of More Than A Wrestler podcast with Pen Ken, Sunny spoke about the inspiration behind her tan, blonde bombshell character.
“So I was, believe it or not, blonde. I was tan, I lived at the beach. I was a fun in sun girl. So when I auditioned and went to Vegas, Matt [Cimber] looked at me. He’s like, ‘You remind me of my ex-wife’ or deceased wife if you will, which was Jayne Mansfield. Then I’m like, ‘What? Jane, isn’t she like really like curvy’? He showed me pictures of her and stuff and he’s like, ‘No, you just remind me of her’. I’m like, ‘That’s cool.’ So the molding of my character was the blonde bombshell.”
Additionally, Sunny revealed that her role on GLOW wouldn’t have happened without her father convincing her to audition.
“My dad was everything. I was really close with my father and he wasn’t even blood relatively believe it or not. He was the best man, but he was also a wrestling fan. So when I was five years old, we were at the Olympic Auditorium watching wrestling matches: “Classy” [Freddie] Blassie, The Destroyer, Andre the Giant. So the inspiration at the time for Glow is that he told me to audition for Glow. When I did, I did it for my dad.”
35 years later, GLOW still continues to inspire today’s generation. The GLOW Netflix series serves as a prime example of the everlasting influence of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. Sunny continued on to speak about the legacy of GLOW and how it inspires today’s generation of women in wrestling.
“It’s to push the girls to their limit and say that you guys can get in the ring and kick some ass, as I say. They can do it. You can be sexy. You can be empowering. If you’re not athletic and you get in there and you have the showmanship, the characterization and what we did for these girls today is show them that with our characters, because we were deep into our characters. We were slowly into our characters. So the pre-generation for these girls, they looked back on us ‘that way we can do this, right’? We’re for internally thankful for WWE and they thank us.”
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The full episode of More Than A Wrestler with Sunny The California Girl can be viewed below
