Grappling with Hate

ART&CULTURE

Grappling with Hate

How one LGBTQ+ professional wrestler overcame aversion and ignorance to later gain sweeping recognition for her fruitful career.

BY JACK LEMNUS

For years, professional wrestler Susan Tex Green, 69, hid her sexuality from her trainer. Her choice to obscure this part of her identity wasn’t decided out of shame or fear of loved ones finding out –she’d already come out to her parents at 11 years old. She did it because her trainer despised lesbians, and Green wanted to wrestle professionally.

Susan Tex Green and Ry Levey at showing of film Out In the Ring

“If you were a lesbian, she wouldn’t train you,” Green said. “We knew we’d be put on the backburner if we came out.”

When her trainer and promoter, Mary Lilian Ellison, or “The Fabulous Moolah,” found out Green’s true sexuality, the quantity and quality of Green’s matches suddenly plummeted. But Green wasn’t going to idly stand by with her career in a submission hold.

In the 1975 National Wrestling Alliance’s World Women’s Championship, Green saw a chance to prove her worth: she would compete to win her mentor’s belt. Before the match, when Green extended her hand for the ceremonial handshake, Ellison returned her with a slap across the face. A red handprint beamed on her cheek like a cave painting. Fueled with rage, not just by the strike, but from the years of oppression and manipulation, Green was determined to win. “Beat me if you can,” she said.

A nearly 25-minute struggle for dominance ensued, and a lot was at stake. For Ellison, retaining her record-long hold on her title as champion. For Green, the right to progress in her passion. Trainer against trainee, they hurled their limbs and bodies, vying for control, until Green caught Ellison in a grappling hold. With enough pressure on Ellison’s hips to dislocate them, Green forced her to forfeit.

“She hit hard, I hit harder,” Green said. In what she would later describe as the highlight of her career, Green not only bested her mentor, but won her belt too.

Because the WWE didn’t want to recognize the new title reign, she was required to strike a deal with Ellison for the belt’s return. Upon condition, Ellison could no longer attempt to blacklist Green or hinder her career. When Ellison accepted, it meant that Green could compete unhindered while openly identifying as lesbian.

Largely due to promoters, it was nearly impossible to advance as an openly LGBTQ+ wrestler in the 1970s. It was a choice between being out or being professional.

“If you wanna get booked, you gotta climb the fence,” Green said, referring to the pressure to identify as straight. There were even promoters who would attempt to convert their wrestlers.

“Some would try to sleep with you,” Green said. “They’d say ‘I’ll be the one to change you straight.’”

But despite these challenges, LGBTQ+ people have always participated and prospered in the sport. It’s not until now that the LGBTQ+ wrestlers from Green’s generation are gaining recognition for their achievements. After wrestling for fifty-four years, Green will be the first lesbian woman inducted into the Women’s Wrestling Hall of Fame.

“The WWE is never going to acknowledge these women,” said Christopher Annino, co-founder of the Women’s Wrestling Hall of Fame and former student of Green’s. Annino said there was no place to preserve the history of female wrestlers, and that inspired its creation in 2021.

Seen as a wrestling legend, Green was asked to be a co-founder of the hall of fame and a class of 2023 inductee. “She’s very much a trailblazer,” Annino said.

Born in Corpus Christi, Texas, Green wrestled her first match on her fifteenth birthday. Since then, she’s wrestled around the world, been on the cover of various magazines, and won the 1971 NWA Women’s World Tag Team Championship with her tag team partner, Sandy Parker. Green, who pronounces her sport as “wrastling” in her Texan accent, was known in the ring for her American- ag boots and 10-gallon hat. “I was good at connecting with a crowd,” she said.

When she came out at 11 years old to her parents, they were encouraging and accepting. “They didn’t treat me any di erent because of who I was,” she said. Her parents bestowed upon her the courage she would carry through life, in and out of the ring.

She learned from their resilience after watching her mother recover from a serious car accident and her father recuperate after falling o an oil rig. “I saw their ghts and how they persevered,” she said. “They always put mind over matter, and when you’ve got a strong enough mind, you can come out the winner.”

Green drew from that strength after she was assaulted while working as a zoning inspector in 2008. The attack left her partially paralyzed in the left side of her body, yet she continued to teach wrestling from a wheelchair until she relearned how to walk.

To this day, after the attack, decades of wrestling, a boating accident and a knee replacement, Green still trains mostly men at her “Gym of Pain and Glory” in South Carolina. She is also “one of the boys” in a motorcycle club, “the Swamp Dogs,” and occasionally performs country-western songs in drag. Her last wrestling match was in October 2021.

Starting as a 112-pound lesbian girl in the 1970s, Green encountered many people eager to dismiss and discourage her. When people tried to put her down, she would remember a saying her rst trainer taught her: “Be like a duck – just let the water roll o your back,” Green said. “If you let everything that people say weigh on you, you’re gonna sink.”

Women’s Wrestling Hall of Fame Inaugural Induction

The Women’s Wrestling Hall of Fame www. womenswrestlinghallo ame.com (WWHOF) was founded in 2021 by ECW original Angel Orsini, ECW original Pitbull # 1 Gary Wolf, award-winning filmmaker Christopher Annino, and Pro Wrestling Hall of Famer Susan Tex Green. The purpose is to preserve the historic integrity of women’s wrestling both professional and amateur. The amateur category is exclusive to Olympians and Collegiate female wrestlers only. WWHOF is in association with the International Wrestling Hall of Fame in Albany, New York www.prowrestlinghall.org and “Good Times Guaranteed”.

Documentary Film “Circle of Champions”

The hall of fame was inspired by the documentary on the history of women’s wrestling “Circle of Champions”

Produced by Green, Wolf, Orsini, Annino and Evan Ginzburg of “The Wrestler” the film is a New England Music Hall of Fame (NEMHOF) www.nemhof.com production.

JACK LEMNUS is an undergraduate at the University of Florida and is currently a reporter for WUFT News. What drew him to journalism was a deep desire to illuminate the realities of underserved communities and engage hard conversations. A Clearwater native, he loves to fill his bookshelves and practice his Spanish while traveling Latin America.