Wrestler of the Week: Alundra Blayze
RondaRousey.com’s Wrestler of the Week series profiles significant wrestlers from the past and present.
Debrah Ann Miceli—aka WWF’s Alundra Blayze and WCW’s Madusa—was a pillar of the women’s divisions of multiple wrestling companies in the early 1990s and a key figure at the beginning of the Monday Night Wars. Though she displayed her considerable in-ring skill in a time when women’s wrestling wasn’t a priority, today, her importance has been recognized by the WWE Hall of Fame and many wrestlers who came after her.
Like plenty of wrestlers, Madusa started her career on the independent circuit. She showed she was a talent to watch early on, so much so that, in 1988, she became the first woman to receive Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s Rookie of the Year Award.
The next year, she achieved another huge accomplishment, becoming the first non-Japanese wrestler to sign a contract with All Japan Women’s Pro Wrestling (AJW) during its peak of popularity and critical acclaim. On an episode of Table for Three, she described her three years living and training in Japan as “one of the best experiences that I did. It really made me who I was.” When she returned to the U.S., her excursion had “ignited something in me, and I said, ‘I’m going to change this business.’”
Before she started really making women’s wrestling history in America, Madusa spent a couple of years in WCW as part of the Dangerous Alliance led by Paul E. Dangerously (aka Paul Heyman). She mainly valeted for Rick Rude but also had an intergender match against Dangerously at Clash of the Champions XXI. When Madusa returned to WCW later in the decade, she would continue to face off against men in the ring, but
In 1993, Madusa’s profile in the wrestling world would rise considerably when she signed with WWF. Using the ring name “Alundra Blayze,” she was the focus of the women’s division that had been dormant since 1990. She won a tournament to become the first WWF Women’s Champion of this particular era and asked the company to bring in new women for her to wrestle—which is when her old AJW coworkers started coming in.
Blayze’s key feud in WWF was against Bull Nakano, and together they raised the bar for women’s wrestling in the U.S. with matches like their classic at SummerSlam 1994. After a rivalry with Bertha Faye in 1995, that fall’s Survivor Series made it look like Blayze would soon have some classic wars with another AJW hoss, Aja Kong. However, Blayze was released from her WWF contract soon after this pay-per-view and the company’s women’s division quickly withered away—until it returned in a much different form during the Attitude Era.
However, Blayze was far from done with wrestling and was soon offered new opportunities in WCW (again as Madusa). Unfortunately, what might be remembered best about her time in this promotion is how she kicked off her 1995 return: by throwing the WWF Women’s Championship in the trash! Years later on Table for Three, she remarked that “I truthfully never thought it would blow up the way it did… I started the freakin’ Monday Night Wars because of that.” In a 2010 interview, she also commented on the reception the incident received, which included her being blacklisted by the WWF/WWE for the next 20 years:
“If I was a guy I would’ve been on the cover of every magazine. Because I was a woman, I was called a disgrace to the business. That’s the truth.”
Beyond this early scandal, Madusa spent her next two years in WCW as the focus of its new women’s division. Like WWF, the company brought in a fair amount of outside female talent, and Madusa once again feuded with Nakano and came out on top. But when WCW established a women’s title, Madusa lost to another Japanese legend, Akira Hokuto, in the finals of the tournament to crown the first—and ultimately only—champion. Their rivalry continued and concluded with a Title vs. Career match at the Great American Bash 1997. Madusa lost and left WCW for nearly two years. Meanwhile, the WCW women’s division died out, and unlike the WWF’s, it was for good.
When Madusa returned to WCW in April 1999, it was part of Randy Savage’s faction Team Madness, playing essentially an eye candy role on the Macho Man’s arm alongside Gorgeous George and Miss Madness. In Madusa’s words, “There was no one for me to wrestle, so they said, ‘let’s do something different.’” That “something different” ended up being pitting her against men, first entering her in a tournament for the WCW Championship to be eliminated twice (which was not all that convoluted by 1999 WCW storytelling standards).
Her next angle—managing Evan Karagias—ended with Madusa becoming the first woman to win the WCW World Cruiserweight Championship. The match that ended with Spice, the Nitro Girl Karagias had been found flirting with, betraying him via low blow. Madusa would lose the title in a similarly over-the-top fashion, the conclusion to a feud with Oklahoma—a parody of WWF commentator Jim Ross—which had previously included an Evening Gown match. Her last angle in WCW concluded in a Mixed Tag Team Scaffold Match: Madusa and Billy Kidman vs. Torrie Wilson and Shane Douglas.
In 2001, Madusa chose not to stay with WCW when she heard Vince McMahon was going to buy it. She also retired from wrestling, saying she didn’t like the increasingly sexualized direction in which women’s wrestling was going. She instead turned to the other extreme career she had started in 1999: driving monster trucks.
Miceli would return to the wrestling world, though, in 2015, when she was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame as Alundra Blayze, her relationship with the former WWF repaired. As a part of her speech, she pulled the old women’s title out of a trash can and called herself the reigning women’s champ.
In 2018, Blayze made a return to the ring after an 18-year hiatus in the battle royal at WWE Evolution. Blayze’s participation served as an important recognition of the past of women’s wrestling—as a performer who fought so hard for women’s wrestling to be respected in a time when so few around her cared—at an event that also celebrated its present and presented a hopeful message for its future.