To celebrate Women’s History Month Diva Dirt will be highlighting some of wrestling’s greatest unsung heroes. These individuals for some reason or another don’t get the recognition, respect, and status they deserve. These retrospectives will occur throughout the month of March.
To kick off Women’s History Month, we touched on the 1980s highlighting Wendi Richter and Judy Martin and now we head into the 1990s. The first unsung hero of the 1990s is the one, the only, Luna Vachon.
Luna had a high-profile career, wrestling for WCW, ECW, and WWF. She had it all – well educated and skilled in the ring, a highly-accomplished manager and one of the most unforgettable characters in the business. With all of that being said, she never held the WWF Women’s Championship or received the recognition she deserves.
As part of the Vachon family, wrestling was in her blood and wanting to continue the Vachon name she began training and wrestling for The Fabulous Moolah in the mid-1980s.
Vachon would make her debut in 1985 for CWF, where she would join Kevin Sullivan’s Army of Darkness stable. She adopted the character and post-apocalyptic look that she would be most renowned for. During her time at the promotion, she would begin her long-standing, promotion-spanning feud with Madusa.
In Stampede Wrestling, Luna would begin managing a tag team known as The Blackhearts. This would be her first foray into her managerial career for which she is most remembered. This tends to be the case ove her in-ring accomplishments.
Vachon would debut for WWF in 1993 as Shawn Michaels’ manager at WrestleMania IX. After a feud with Sensational Sherri, in which they would wrestle on house shows, Vachon would go on to manage Bam Bam Bigalow.
Vachon and Bigelow would start a long-running feud with Doink the Clown and his sidekick, Dink. The feud would result in a mixed tag team match at WrestleMania X, which would be Luna’s most high-profile match at the time.
Not long after Luna and Madusa/Alundra Blayze would cross paths once more in the revived WWF women’s division. Luna would challenge her for the WWF Women’s Championship throughout 1994, however, Blayze would retain every time. It was this run of matches that saw Luna placed at 302 in the 1995 PWI 500. She became only the second woman to be included at the time.
Luna would once again return to management and briefly managed Bull Nakano. Ironically after all of her failed attempts at grabbing the title, she would help Nakano end Blayze’s 342-day reign as champion.
After leaving WWF at the end of 1994, Luna would show up in ECW as Tommy Dreamer’s manager during his feud with Raven. During this time she would mix it up with Stevie Richards in a steel cage match at Heat Wave 95.
After ECW, Vachon would have a brief stint in WCW where she would revive her long-time rivalry with Madusa, which culminated in a match at Slamboree. The WCW women’s division wasn’t long for this world and she would return to management and right back to WWF at the end of 1997.
It is this run that Luna Vachon is most remembered, due to her outlandish run with Goldust. This aligns with her high-profile feud with Sable. Vachon re-joined with WWF in the height of the company’s “attitude-era.” She was placed as Goldust’s manager/valet. The two pushed the boundaries in bizarre and bad-taste with their array of garish outfits and uber risque angles.
During this time WWF began to push the mega-over and extremely popular Sable and they needed someone to train and carry her in the ring. The purpose was to “put Sable over” and that someone was Luna.
Despite playing such a pivotal role in making Sable a megastar, Luna was never repaid for all of the efforts she put in. While Sable was widely applauded and adored, Luna was treated the opposite. She was revealed as the newest member of the Human Oddities, a joke faction of “sideshow freaks.”
Having finally getting her way back the big stage, Vachon was once again back to being a novelty act. There would be some brief forays with the WWF Women’s Championship when she faced Jaqueline but nothing and high-profile as against Sable.
Luna would leave WWF in 2000 and appear sporadically on the independent scene until her retirement in 2007.
Sadly, Luna passed away in 2010 and tends to remain as one of wrestling’s forgotten trailblazers. That is until recently. She has been acknowledged and recognized recently about her place in the industry.
Lita would play homage to Luna and a number of other trailblazing women wrestler at the first-ever women’s Royal Rumble in 2018. In 2019 Luna Vachon was inducted into the “Legacy Wing” of the WWE Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, this wing often gets overlooked as well.
Luna was a one-of-a-kind performer in the wrestling business. She was wild, crazy and looked like something straight out of Mad Max. She was as tough as they come and helped women’s wrestling evolve. The evolution went from the hair-pulling, cat-scratching antics of yesteryear to the legitimate wrestling that it is today. Her look, character, and in-ring style set her out from the pack and yet she is still somehow unrecognized as a true hero of wrestling.
Her accomplishments in wrestling may not be many but her impact and legacy are still felt to this to this day.
What are your thoughts on Luna Vachon’s career and do you think she ever truly got the right recognition for her services to wrestling? Let us know below and stay tuned to Diva Dirt for more unsung heroes as we celebrate Women’s History Month.
