On the latest edition of More Than A Wrestler host Pen Ken spoke with the legendary Sunny The California Girl from GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling), where the two conversed about the show’s lasting legacy on the wrestling business, how it continues to inspire people to this day, and where the inspiration for her blonde bomshell character came from. Highlights can be found below.
On the inspiration for her 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.”
Says she would not have been on GLOW had her father not convinced 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.”
How the legacy of GLOW continues to inspire so many:
“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.”
(H/T and transcribed by WrestleZone)