Madusa Micelli

Madusa Micelli, born Debra Ann Micelli in Milan, Italy was the most famous of women wrestlers in the 1990’s. The name Madusa came from MADe in the USA and at 5’9” tall and weighing in at 150 pounds, Madusa was “made” as tough as any male counter part and probably one of the toughest of the women wrestlers at that time. She entered professional wrestling in 1987 after training with Eddie Sharkey and joined Pro Wrestling America for a short time and then entered the Minnesota based organization of the American Wrestling Association. In December of that year she won the AWA Women’s championship in a tournament final over Candi Divine and held the title for almost a year before losing it to Wendi Richter in November of 1988.

Shortly after losing the title, she left the AWA to join the IWA Japan and captured the Women’s title there on two different occasions. She was also the first woman to receive the honor of being Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s Rookie of the Year. Then in 1991 she left the IWA Japan to join World Championship Wrestling. She became a part o Paul E. Dangerously’s “Dangerous Alliance” which consisted of: Rick Rude, Arn Anderson, Bobby Eaton, Steve Austin, and Larry Zbyszko. She ran interference in the matches of the members and often accompanied the “Smooth Operator” Rick Rude to the ring. In October of 1992, Dangerously kicked her out of the Alliance after losing a bikini match to Missy Hyatt in June of that year. She got a modicum of revenge when she was in a match against Paul E. at the Clash of the Champions super card and won the match by count out after Paul E. ran away from her and didn’t return to the ring.

In 1993, the WWE, revived the Women’s division and the Women’s title, which had been vacant since 1990 and Madusa, joined the company at the time, won a six woman battle royal to win the championship and went by the name of Alundra Blayze. In 1995, she began negotiating with WCW for a possible return as she was unhappy with the Blayze character. When the WWE found out that she was negotiating with the rival company while still under contract with the WWE, the WWE fired her. She then appeared on WCW and on television, renounced the Blayze character and threw the WWE Women’s title in a trash can which was reminiscent of the famous Riddick Bowe incident where he threw the WBC World title away just a couple of years earlier and this move also set up the infamous “Montreal Screw Job” where Bret Hart had controversially lost the WWE World title to Shawn Michaels because Vince feared that Bret, who had recently signed with WCW would go and do the same thing.

In 1997, Madusa took a break from wrestling and rejoined WCW in 1999 and lasted until 2001 when Vince McMahon took WCW over. She retired from wrestling and tried her hand at Monster Truck driving and drove the truck of the same name Madusa. She did wrestle one more match after her retirement in 2001 in an independent wrestling show where she wrestled the now WWE Women’s champion, Beth Phoenix.

She drove the monster truck for Live Nation in the Monster Jam series but was later released due to contract negotiations. In May of 2006, she announced that she would be driving the Madusa truck for Team Bigfoot. She began driving for Team Bigfoot full time in 2007.