“They were an embarrassment!”
“They exposed the business!”
“They were swimsuit models and actresses.”
“They weren’t real wrestlers.”
The original GLOW girls have heard it all. They know how they were perceived and how some fans still perceive them. Thanks to the Netflix program based (loosely) on their story, many of the original GLOW girls are finally getting to share their story and change the world’s perception of who they are. The truth will amaze you.
Sunny the California Girl is one of the first to put her true life story into print. Her life story will unfold in the pages of a full color graphic novel produced by Squared Circle Comics. “Fans have already learned a lot about my life from my social media,” says Sunny. “The comic book will mix a lot of my personal story with my wrestling career
Sunny the California Girl was part of the second wave of GLOW girls. She was still a teenager when the show went on the air, but she had been a wrestling fan all her life. “I was raised by my great aunt, and the man I knew as my father figure was the man who got me into wrestling. He was best friends with Fred Blassie, and he knew a lot of the other guys. When I was in diapers, I had a photo taken of me in The Destroyer Dick Beyer’s mask. Years later, I showed him the photo, and he signed it for me.”
Sunny was a tough cookie as a kid, having taken up for her older brother when he became the target of schoolyard bullies. “My brother had a hip displacement, and his feet were larger than most kids. He looked different, and people would tease him and call him names. I had enough, and I stood up for him. The other kids threatened to fight me if I didn’t back down, so I decided to start fighting back. There I was, Sunny the California Girl who rarely won a match on TV because I was a babyface, on the street corner fighting bullies!”
Sunny proved she was a fighter at age sixteen as well when she nearly died in a drowning accident. “I flatlined for almost four minutes, and they thought I was gone. My mother had her first heart attack on the way to the hospital to see me. But I came back and pulled through.”
A few years later, Sunny also lost her brother to suicide. “He was a pastor and a psychiatrist, and he hung himself in the church basement when he was 26. “It’s in the book, along with many other stories of my life,” she says. “I have some real crazy stories, let me tell you!”
One of the key stories, of course, is how she got into wrestling. It was just a few years after she lost her brother that her father called her into the living room to watch a new wrestling program called GLOW. Sunny had become a great athlete and was doing some modeling at the time, but GLOW really caught her attention. “I was like, Wow! These are women of all sizes, shapes, and colors, and they’re all wrestling.”
At the end of the program, they announced they were looking for new girls to join the cast. Sunny sent a headshot into the studio and was one of the few girls accepted for the new cast.
“My dad never got to see me wrestle,” she says. “He passed away while we were still filming. They pulled me out of the ring during a shoot to tell me he was in the hospital, so I flew home to see him. He never got to see me wrestle, but he knew I was wrestling.”
Sunny hasn’t held anything back in her memoir, and it’s sure to be a great read that will continue to rewrite the narrative about GLOW and the wrestlers who made the show a household name. Fans who sign on to the Kickstarter will be able to add on perks including T-shirts, autographed photos and much more.
Head to Kickstarter now to support Sunny the California Girl’s graphic novel. Pick your perks, sign up, and get ready to learn a truly amazing story of one of GLOW’s brightest stars.