Professional wrestling organizations often emphasize the importance of “You Shouldn’t Try This At Home,” and for good reason.
Injuries and long term health come at the risk of becoming a professional wrestler. That reality certainly rocked former GLOW star, Tulsa. In speaking on More Than A Wrestler, the GLOW original discussed the harsh reality of injuries, especially in an era with less physical protection in the 1980’s.
“At the time, we didn’t know there was long term health problems, mostly concussions. We all got hurt. One of the reasons is we weren’t wearing elbow pads and knee pads. Those are the biggest injuries when you’re in the ring, basically. I broke my tailbone because Big Bad Mama threw me over the top rope and I landed wrong ,” Tulsa recalled.
“We lost Cheyenne Cheer to a knee injury….But we had the best paramedics. They were our GLOW paramedics, and they are paramedics. And before the shows, they would wrap somebody who had a tweaked their ankle in training, or wrap elbow or whatever. They were really, really great.”
Tulsa continued to explain what transpired when she tweaked her ankle in a match against Big Bad Mama.
“I got her [Big Bad Mama] from the top rope. We both went down and the plywood under the mat broke….So when I got up, my ankle tweaked. And it really tweaked,” she described.
“I sprained my ankle when Big Bad Mama and I did that….I didn’t want what to call the paramedics out because I had more matches. I wanted to make sure I got to do the other matches. So I went backstage and somebody tells Steve that I’d hurt my ankle. He said ‘Paul is out there. We could have carried you in’. [But] I wanted to make sure I can come back out again.”
“He wrapped my ankle. He was an Orthopedic Surgeons PA in the service, so he knew how to do all these nifty wraps,” Tulsa went on. “I got to go back out there and do more matches. My foot, my ankle, black and blue the next day. They sent us to the sports doctor and the therapy people. I mean, when we got hurt, we had doctors to go to or sick or whatever. They took care of us like that, but if I had more protection, or are all the girls had a little more protection, we wouldn’t be maybe so stove up.”
Besides competing in the GLOW ring though, Tulsa grew up a real life daredevil as well.
“I drove my parents crazy because I would climb on top of anything and hang upside down, including a third floor balcony railing,” she recalled.
“I was three when I did that, but I have pictures of me at [age] two, upside down on the swing set, the top bar of the swing set, swinging off that. [I] just loved action. I climbed the tree, jumped to the roof then jumped back to the trees. [I] tried to ride the the garage door down.”
Tulsa continued on to explain the possible motivations to her fearless nature, and breaking her collarbone (and fingernail) once.
“I just wanted to do it, I thought I could do this,” she declared. “I thought that I can do this. So yeah, I’ve got a concussion on that because the door went like this and stopped. I went head first, so that didn’t work out too well.”
“I was pretty much fearless, I just liked to do things. I thought, I can do this. I remember ramping my baby buggy, not mine, a real baby buggy. And it hit and stopped. I went over it, broke a collarbone, tore my fingernail off and got another concussion. But I was more upset about the fingernail being torn off,” she admitted. “I would do that kind of stuff, and it was stupid.”
“Kids don’t do it. You don’t need to do that,” she emphasized. “Getting older….I learned the hard way. It’s better to be smart than a daredevil. Do what you want to do. But figure out how to do it without getting hurt or without hurting somebody else.”
The full interview with Tulsa on More Than A Wrestler can be viewed below:
