Picture it, California, the year 2000 (I would use the Wayback, but it's in the shop after my last three articles), David McLane had a dream. His dream, to make an all-female wrestling promotion. Well, he did make the promotion, but it wasn't at all good. In fact, in certain cases, it was so bad, it was funny. The Women Of Wrestling (WOW) promotion had everything needed to be a syndicated wrestling company: ring, arena, Lee Marshall on commentary, writers, wrestlers, guard rails, referees, and a stage. But, the talent wasn't all that good and the writing was a joke. I guess that the wrestlers weren't that bad, it was just that they were all saddled with such terrible characters and gimmicks that they would make the Repo Man, Bastion Booger, Shockmaster, and even Oz look like great characters in comparison.

In fact, one might be compelled to think that McLane knew he was polishing turds here and was hoping to get an audience solely on camp value. How do you think I started watching it; the storylines? I think not. It was because I needed a wrestlecrap fix at 11p.m. on a Saturday night, and I stumbled upon WOW. The only reason I kept watching was to see how laughably bad it could get the next week. And, each week was like a bad car wreck, you could only stare and you couldn't look away. And most of the humor came from these nonsensical comic book like characters that came to life in that ring with the lavender mat and the white ropes and put fans to sleep weekly.

Come on, how can someone think that a Xena superfan (Tanja, Warrior Woman), a schizophrenic (Jacklyn Hyde), a hick (Becky, The Farmer's Daughter), a woman banned from the WNBA for excessive violence (Slam Dunk), cheerleaders (Randi Rah Rah & Patti Pep of Team Spirit), a cowgirl (Bronco Billie) or a dancer turned secret agent (Jane Blond) be a good idea? These are just some of the bad characters that WOW churned out every week. Most of the names were just stupid puns. Besides Jacklyn Hyde, there were three tag teams that were full of rotten puns and lack of talent. We had Caged Heat, which consisted of ex-cons Loca, Vendetta (so far, so good), and Delta Lotta Pain. I kid you not, there is a character named Delta Lotta Pain. These characters were as close to Nailz clones as you can get. And, to make things worse, Loca was your stereotypical Latina fighter with a fiery temper. Not much is known about Vendetta, because she was with the company all of a few months, then WOW shut their doors.

The second team is Harley's Angels (a stupid enough name to begin with), which consisted of Charlie Davidson (dear God, it's almost painful writing a name that damn stupid) and EZ Rider (not nearly as painful to write, but painful none the less). Harley's Angels were joined by WOWs top heel, Thug. I'll cover Thug a little later. And finally, there was Law & Order, which was a team of female Big Bossman wannabes named Nicky Law and Christy Order (thus the name Law & Order). Again, I really don't know much about Law & Order, because they came in really close to the end.

Among the other characters, we had Wendi Wheels (a wrestling racecar driver... de-ja-vu), Jungle Grrrl (from the African jungles, and yes that is Grrrl with no i and three r's), the Disciplinarian (a wrestler from the board of education... de-ja-vu again), "The Total Athlete" Roxy Powers (if you need help figuring out the "inspiration" for this reject, then stop reading, you are beyond help), "Hammerin'" Heather Steele (a female Tim Allen [insert feminine grunting]), and Lana Star (a rising Hollywood star). Like I said, most of these characters weren't winners from the word go. No matter what David McLane could have tried, no one was really going to look at these shallow, 2D characters as anything more than a joke.

The other characters in the company had real bland, generic names like Riot, Danger, Poison, Phantom, and Ice Cold. Like the unoriginality of the names, these characters really didn't do much in WOW history, except Ice Cold, who lost a hair vs. hair match with Lana Star and wrestled WOWs last months balder than a baby's ass. What's worse than the names of the characters was the name of the finishing moves. Sure, they all were WWE standards, but the WOW names for them were terrible. Like Thug's Last Call was a Vader Bomb, and the Disciplinarian's Final Exam was a Pedigree. In fact, you would see a lot of really great moves, just with horrid names. Terri Gold (the WOW Champ) had a moonsault that she called the Perfect 10. Caged Heat utilized a 3D and called it Capital Punishment. Caged Heat also used the Hart Foundation's old Hart Attack move and called it the Drive-By. Oh, and there was also Selina Majors' Stunner and Slam Dunk's Chokeslam, so it seems that decent names do spring up, just not often. Speaking of Selina Majors...

The biggest feud in WOW history was between Selina Majors and Thug. I guess that McLane knew that the only way to get the seats to fill would be to get some established female talent. Nothing gets more established than Rockin' Robin (Selina Majors) and Peggy Lee Leather (Thug). Well, okay, so Robin isn't really a great star and Peggy is from one of McLane's other failed all women's promotions (POWW, which somehow stands for Powerful Women Of Wrestling), but I don't think WOW could get anyone better.

That cage match is really the only thing that the PPV had going. The rest of the matches were terrible (like Jane Blond vs. Tanja, Warrior Woman. How can a match between two actual jobbers be on a PPV? I'm asking you, really.), and not really all that interesting. The only other things of note about Unleashed was the debut of Caged Heat's Vendetta, as well as Law & Order. We also learned that the Disciplinarian bought Bronco Billie's ranch (which really sucks for Billie, because she hailed from "The Ranch", like WCW's Shark hailed from "The Great Barrier Reef"). About a month after the Unleashed atrocity, WOW officially shut down, leaving David McLane with three failed women's promotions (POWW, GLOW, and WOW), and probably the hopes of starting a fourth. Hell, GLOW was almost a success, so there's still hope.