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Rajiv Gandhi Gold Cup wrestling from Thursday

Express News Service ( India)

New Delhi, August 16:

Last year’s winner Rajiv Tomar, runner-up Jagdish Kaliraman and Commonwealth champion Anil Maan will be some of the prominent wrestlers who will be seen in action in the sixth edition of Rajiv Gandhi Gold Cup wrestling competition to be held at Chhatrasal Stadium here from Thursday.

The winner of the prestigeous Gold Cup wrestling competition will receive Rs 1 lakh prize money (plus 80 kg category) while the runner-up will be assured of Rs 51,000. The third-placed matman will get Rs 31,000.

The winner of the women’s competition, to be held simultaneously, will be richer by Rs 1 lakh. The second and third position finishers will receive the same amount as their male counterparts.

Commonwealth gold medallist Geetika Jhakar, Sonika Kaliraman and Alka Tomar (Asian Championship bronze medallist) will be among the participants in the women’s section for the plus 58 kg category.

Along with the wrestling competition, a basketball tournament exclusively for school girls will be held at the same venue during August 18-20. The winning team will receive Rs 51,000 while the runners-up will get Rs 31,000 and third-placed team Rs 21,000.
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Bass River honours Games hero
Krista Betts, N.B.'s only gold medal winner, honoured for her championship wrestling performance

DWAYNE TINGLEY
Times & Transcript Staff 8/22/05

BASS RIVER - Krista Betts guesses there might be 200 people in Bass River and she knows them all. In fact, most were crammed into the Down Home Variety and Take-Out last night to honour their gold medal hero.

They brought dozens of platters of sandwiches and sweets as well as heaping portions of community pride and teardrops of joy.

Applause shook the pine walls of the cozy lounge as coaches praised Betts, a shy and soft-spoken sprite who took the Canada Games in Regina, Sask. by storm last week when she won New Brunswick's only gold medal.

The 15-year-old dynamo won four straight wrestling matches, including the championship bout (7-0, 7-0) against a highly-rated Ontario opponent, to capture the girls 40-kilogram division.

Long-time coach Kevin Scully said Betts is tiny and genial, but appearances are deceiving.

"She is just a wonderful person who will succeed in life no matter what she achieves in sports," said Scully, who coached her at Eleanor Graham Middle School in Rexton.

"She's petite, meek and quiet, but she's also an honours student. At first, she discounted her own abilities, but when she got into it she exploded into a tiger on the wrestling mat."

All of the attention left Betts, who is entering Grade 11 next month, nearly speechless, but appreciative.

"People around here are very special," she said, speaking barely above a whisper.

"They've always supported me. Even before I went to the Canada Games, they all wished me good luck and encouraged me.

"This is what it's like in a small town like this. We all know each other and we help each other. Bass River is a great place. There's no place like it, really."

Stacey Smallwood, also a wrestler, and softball player Kyle Ryan, a member of the softball team, both from Bass River, and Drew Agnew, a wrestler from Rexton, were also at last night's reception.

"Coming from New Brunswick means people don't notice us much, but we can compete with the other provinces," Betts said.

"We train just as hard as they do. There's no reason why we can't compete with them. It's like coming from Bass River. We might be small, but we can accomplish things, too."

Betts said she was inspired by her mother, Lisa, who wasn't at last night's party because she was driving home from Regina.

"She's been great - right from the start," Betts said. "She's always been positive and supportive. There are times when I told her I wanted to quit and she never told me what to so, but she supported me and made me think things over.

"I have a lot to be thankful for. I am thankful for her and my grandparents and other people in the community. I'm lucky to be from this community."

Karen Beers, a grandmother, said Krista made many sacrifices in order to attend the Canada Games.

"Most people will never know how hard she worked," Karen Betts said. "She jogged every day and practised every day. She watched her diet and missed out on a lot of things because she had to go wrestling.

"Everybody's proud of her. Ever since she won, everybody's coming up to me and hugging me. She's become a real celebrity around here."

Her other grandmother, Betty Betts, said Krista has captured the hearts of the young and old in Kent County.

"It's wonderful that she won the gold medal, but she's also a good person with a good heart. She always thinks of others instead of herself," Betty said.

A chartered flight brought Krista and several other members of the New Brunswick team back to Moncton yesterday at 4:30 a.m. Their luggage didn't arrive for another two hours.

She was exhausted at last night's reception and she was looking forward to sleeping at home again. However, she won't have much time to relax.

Betts has been named to the Canadian team that will compete at the Pan-Am Games in Chile. Her flight leaves Moncton tomorrow.

"When I get back to school, I'll get some rest," she said.

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Lady wrestler now a movie star, too

Pat Berman, Knight Ridder Newspapers
(Monday, August 22, 2005 1:00 am)

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The Fabulous Moolah stared across the table, her clear blue eyes fixed under firmly penciled brows.

"I love old people and I love babies. And if anybody else steps in my way, I'll just kick (their butt). That's the way it was."

Filmmaker Ruth Leitman offers a glimpse into the determined lives and often hard times of Moolah and other female champs of the squared circle in the documentary "Lipstick & Dynamite: The First Ladies of Wrestling." "World Champion Professional Female Wrestler" for 30 years, Moolah rarely made concessions in the ring and, at 82, makes no concessions to age, either.

With her trim 5-foot-5 figure, her once jet-black hair still shoulder length but dyed a softer strawberry blond, and accessorized in diamond-studded gold jewelry, Moolah could have been queen of bling before there was bling. Trophies and photos from her wrestling career compete for space in the narrow foyer of her sprawling Columbia residence — on Moolah Drive.

Moolah's real name is Lillian Ellison. Her autobiography, "The Fabulous Moolah: First Goddess of the Squared Circle," was written with Larry Platt, whose subjects have included basketball players Allen Iverson and Charles Barkley.

In name, in looks and in purpose, Moolah always has focused on her business as athlete and entertainer. Neither the penury nor pitfalls of her often wild and woolly profession distracted her from her single-minded goal: World ... Champion ... Wrestler ... !

"When I was wrestling in championship matches and I'd look across the ring and see my opponent, the first thing I would think about is: 'She's trying to take away what I've worked so hard for.' I'd get mad right then."

Real or feigned, the wrath of Moolah was her calling card in the ring.

She acquired her "Moolah" moniker when a wrestling promoter asked her why she wanted to wrestle. Her response: "For the money! I want to wrestle for the moolah!"

Born in 1923 and raised in a neighborhood near Blythewood, S.C., called Tookiedoo, Ellison was the youngest — and only girl — of 13 children. Her mother died of cancer when Ellison was 8. Father-daughter time for Ellison meant attending weekly pro wrestling matches in Columbia.

"First, I wanted to be an aviator like Amelia Earhart — only I wanted to come back," Ellison said.

Then Mildred Burke, the female pro wrestling champ, showed up for a match in Columbia, and young Lillian's path was set. She would be a champion wrestler, too.

Moolah held the championship belt from 1956 until 1984. The next year, she won it again for two more years.

In the scripted and theatrical world of pro wrestling, Moolah was able to reclaim the title for a final time in 1999 at the tender age of 76.

The film, which received mixed reviews when it opened last spring, combines recent interviews and match footage that documents the world of women's pro wrestling through the 1940s and '50s. Critics praised Leitman for digging up some fascinating footage and for her diligence in tracking down her interview subjects.

Moolah is not that hard to find, but just as in her glory days, she is not easy to pin down. First, there is the tag team of Johnnie Mae Young, also a world champion and longtime Moolah associate, and Katie Glass, a Moolah-trained midget wrestler whose nom de ring was Diamond Lil. They have been with Moolah for years.

Young had retired from the ring to evangelize and care for an ailing mother in California. When her mother died, Moolah invited Young to stay with her and Glass, who has been with Moolah for more than 40 years. Over the years they have trained young people who want to break into pro wrestling.

For a mother of one, grandmother of six and great-grandmother of six more, who also had heart surgery, pneumonia and is nursing a wobbly ankle, Moolah gets around just fine — driving her late-model Caddy or flying to wherever big-time wrestling promoter Vince McMahon Jr. asks her.

She has nothing but love for McMahon and his late father, who supported her career.

But her reputation in the ring was as the bad girl with plenty of dirty tricks up her sleeve — or more likely, down her decolletage.

Recalling wrestling fans who booed and hissed at her, Moolah said: "I loved when they got mad at me. They called me all kinds of names. I said, 'Call me anything you want. You don't write my check.'"

She and Young, also 82, just signed another contract with McMahon.

"I still work for the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), wrestling and doing commercials," Moolah said.

To her delight, McMahon scheduled a match for her at the Carolina Coliseum on her 80th birthday and threw a birthday party for her when it was over. A pleased Young added that McMahon promised to promote a match between the two women for their 100th birthday.

Sitting at a table in her Columbia home with family photos and a slew of birthday cards on her right and Young to her left, Moolah said she had seen only parts of "Lipstick & Dynamite."

"We were in L.A. for the opening and everyone was wanting autographs and the movie was going on," she said. "I would call it a documentary. All the girls say what they think."

"We say what we think," Young added.

"Not all of it," Moolah responded. "I say the nice things."

Moolah keeps her own counsel when it suits her. She had nothing good to say about wrestling promoter Billy Wolfe, whose predatory nature is expounded upon in "Lipstick & Dynamite." But she demurs on other topics. Of her four marriages, she joked, "I didn't pick the right ones, but I had fun with them anyway."

Then there are the wrestling moves she taught her 10-year-old great-granddaughter. When a boy shoved her from behind and sent her and her books sprawling, the little girl picked herself up, gave her attacker a hard look and kicked him in a very sensitive area, leaving him writhing in pain.

"She got him by the hair and pulled him up and said, 'Now, if you tell on me, I'll do it again,'" Moolah recounted.

She was proud of her pupil, but thought the girl should have kicked him once more to "let him know she meant business."

After "Lipstick & Dynamite," Leitman expressed interest in doing a movie about Moolah. But there's a catch. Leitman, she said, "will have to come up with more money."

She didn't call herself The Fabulous Moolah for nothing.

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