I was bored the other night and decided to look for random things on the internet. Ran across missyhyatt.net and various videos, etc. related to Missy Hyatt. Looking over the site, I felt somewhat sad in some ways in missing the good old days of pro-wrestling. A lot of my life has changed over the years, especially in the past decade. So sometimes I’ll reminisce about my favorite aspects of my life growing up in nostalgia. With regards to pro-wrestling, I often enjoy finding images, articles, videos, etc. on older performers.
For a period of time, I became utterly fascinated with the world of Japanese female pro-wrestling. That led me to becoming more involved in Japan than I had imagined. But prior to all that, I was still a fan of some of the original pro-wrestling divas back in the 80’s. My favorite two of all time back in the day are Sensational Sherri and Missy Hyatt.
For me, Sherri will always be my #1. She had it all, the looks, the personality, the craziness and the abilities in the ring. I thought the world really lost someone special when she passed away. For myself, the tragedy of knowing that I would never have the opportunity to meet one of my favorites in this world was truly heart rendering. Whenever I see videos of Sherri posted, the REAL Sherri, she always comes off as genuine, spunky yet respectful of everyone. Her WWE Hall of Fame speech is an instant classic and immortalized the person that everyone has come to love. To me she seemed like she would be an incredibly fun person to hang around and it’s a shame that a jabronie like myself will never get the chance to really find out.
That leads me to my other favorite, Missy Hyatt. While Sherri was the professional wrestler improving herself in the 80’s, there were other divas who made a tremendous impact on us pre-pubescent kids watching Saturday morning wrestling. You had Miss Elizabeth (everyone’s perennial favorite). But her fame is known mostly through her association with the Macho Man Randy Savage and the WWE. However, I never really saw much in her except the quiet, country girl next door type. Besides her, you also had Baby Doll, Sunshine, Precious and Missy Hyatt. Baby Doll made an impression more through her size while Precious was a perpetual accessory that hung around Jimmy Garvin. I never really cared for Sunshine for some reason. However, she was always paired up in cat fights with Missy Hyatt back in the WCCW days.
I remember seeing one match with the Fantastics and her team (which included John Tatum and someone else I do not recall). I believe at one point Sunshine had grabbed an audience member’s chili hotdog and smeared Hyatt all over with it. The Fantastics jerkishly insulted, “Hyatt, you look so good!” as she threw a temper tantrum and egged her team to destroy the Fantastics. But I ended up siding with her (I found Missy to be far better looking than Sunshine). From that day onward, I became a Missy Hyatt fan and tried following her wherever she went during the 80’s and part of the early 90’s.
In my nostalgic runs, I discovered her various social networking platforms and started digging up stuff on her both current and older interviews and matches. I have to say one thing about her: she doesn’t hold back. Or if she did, then you wouldn’t be able to tell because she’s quite blunt about everything. Perhaps, part of her bluntness is her love for garnering attention. Perhaps, the other part is because she doesn’t need to hide anything. Either way, there’s a kind of respect that I have for someone who is forthcoming like that.
However, what’s sad is the comments people make about her. She’s very direct about her desire to make an easy buck and has no qualms about the way she’s doing it through her website. Yet people (presumably guys) often degrade her with names like “whore” etc. and knock her appearance (she’s not in her teens anymore people). But the same people will take her to bed given the opportunity and/or worship her early days.
That whole thing bothers me quite a bit. I guess when you’re famous enough, you’ll always be subjected to the masses and their opinions tend to be low unless you manage to live a completely pristine life. But even then people will find things to degrade you.
When I look at Missy (or people in a similar position), I think about my own situation right now and begin to realize that at a certain point you have to make sacrifices to move ahead with your life. Certainly, there probably are times when she did things that she didn’t feel too proud of. But anyone trying to climb up that ladder has their own demons; that’s simply how you move forward in life. In Missy’s case, she was physically blessed and decided to use those attributes. Honestly, if put in a similar circumstance, I would do the same and not have any shame about it.
Despite all that, I tend to ignore the so-called fanboys and smarks and focus exclusively on the person. In Missy’s case, I was listening to her discuss Luna Vachon and I think the way she described her relationship put a slightly different light on Missy for me. I think most people perceive Missy just as a money grubbing bitch who uses men to get to the next level. That could be true but there is also a human with feelings like anyone else. I appreciated her sentiments about Luna as it showed what little we really know about the pro-wrestling business, especially about the people involved.
My feeling is that at this point in her career, she’s immune to a lot of things like the pettiness of the internet and is more focused on using her legacy to continue to press forward. Some people feel that she looks terrible but I mean for her age, she still is doing quite well.
The way I look at things is that I feel fortunate she’s still around. Hopefully, one day I’ll be able to meet her. It would be nice to have a real date with her, just talking about her life in retrospect to see how things were compared to now. The thing is that you gotta do these things while people are still around and appreciate them before it’s too late.
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