There have always been powerful women in wrestling — Chyna, Lita, Luna — but in the mainstream world of WCW and WWE, they’re mostly relegated to the sidelines, bit players in larger stories centered on male wrestlers. The biggest exception to this was G.L.O.W. (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling), a small federation that focused only on female wrestlers, some of them actresses, some of them models. The series ran on TV, in its prime, for four years between 1986 and 1990, but it’s continued to exist in various iterations since. Not gone and not quite forgotten, it’s just been announced as the inspiration for a new (fictional) series at Netflix, called G.L.O.W. and produced by Jenji Kohan.
There’s very little in the way of actual, confirmed plot for this new show, and no casting decisions have been made. But, briefly, a look at some of the characters from G.L.O.W.’s run: Babe the Farmer’s Daughter, Big Bad Mama, Matilda the Hun, Gremlina, Debbie Debutante, Scarlett the Southern Belle, and, of course Zelda the Brain. Just the names alone set the imagination running wild, and it’ll be interesting to see what Kohan does with the property.
Kohan, I’m sure, feels right at home at Netflix, thanks to her continued attachment to the show she started there, Orange Is the New Black. (Kohan’s Salem Witch show, which still hasn’t surfaced, is attached to HBO.) The wrestling league found new life as recently as 2011, when a new documentary, GLOW: The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, was released. That documentary is now available on Netflix.