Mae Young, a pioneer in the world of women’s professional wrestling as well as the only performer to have documented matches in nine different decades, passed early Thursday morning at her Columbia, WV, home. She was 90 years old.
Modern WWE fans might only know Mae as an over-sexed old lady who showed up randomly to sexually assault people, take off her clothes and call people names, but the woman known as ‘The Queen’ has done so much and contributed so much to the sport it can’t possibly fit in one of these blog posts. I’ll put it to you this way … she was the first-ever NWA United States Women’s Champion, but she also won a bikini contest at the Royal Rumble in 2000. She was a living inductee to the WWE Hall of Fame in 2008, but once had a match postponed by the Pearl Harbor bombing. You know, in 1941. Sure, she once got storyline-impregnated by Mark Henry and then storyline-gave-birth to a plastic mannequin hand but she was also a trainer, a Christian evangelist, a documentary subject, a teen wrestling sensation and on and on. She was everything.
And you know what? That 1923 in her bio might be a lie. Some friends say she was born several years earlier, meaning she was getting powerbombed off a stage through a table when she was even older. Every possible cheer to a life fully-lived, and we will miss Mae with all of our hearts.
Here’s some ridiculous stuff she did, because that’s how you should remember anybody.
RIP Mae Young.
