Ivory To Be Inducted Into The WWE Hall Of Fame

Former Women’s Champion Ivory has been announced as the newest addition to WWE’s Hall Of Fame Class 2018.

Ivory, real name Lisa Moretti, joins the Dudley Boyz and Goldberg in this year’s induction ceremony, with many more announcements due as the Road To Wrestlemania trundles on.

The ceremony will take place on April 6th in New Orleans, just two days before WrestleMania.

Ivory’s career began in 1986 in the now-vaunted confines of Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling (GLOW). Competing under the moniker of Tina Ferrari she quickly carved a niche for herself in the now legenderary promotion.

As Ferrari, she captured the GLOW Championship but it wasn’t until 10 years later that the woman who came to be known as Ivory debuted for the-then World Wrestling Federation.

Debuting in 1999 in the corner of Mark Henry and D’Lo Brown against the underrated duo of Jeff Jarrett and Owen Hart, Ivory’s debut was a quick and short launchpad to jettison her to the Women’s Championship.

She duly took that from Debra, who was working as Jarrett’s valet at the time and married in real life to Stone Cold Steve Austin, and from there Ivory never looked back.

After hotshotting the belt back and forth with The Fabulous Moolah (who was 76 at the time and riding the wave of a renaissance alongside the incouragble Mae Young), Ivory held the Women’s Championship a total of three times in her career.

With the ebb and flow of the women’s division, a lack of interest created by a distinct absence of focus and creativity from WWE, Ivory could have ended lost in the shuffle like so many of her contemporaries during those hectic years.

Some of Ivory’s best work in WWE came as part of the well-remembered Right To Censor stable.

In a thinly-veiled swipe at the Parents Television Council (PTC), who persisted in highlighting the crude and violent content in WWE’s programming, the RTC preached a puritanical and hypocritical message and attempted to destroy those that offended their sensibilities.

A buttoned up white shirt and floor length black skirt didn’t hold Ivory back in the ring, however. She still gave the audience a lesson night after night in how to be a denizen of the craft.

After the end of the RTC angle, Ivory’s in-ring appearances gradually declined but her role within the company was no less important.

Before her full departure from WWE in 2009, she served as a trainer in series three of WWE’s former reality show Tough Enough, as well as providing host duties for any number of WWE programmes and events.

In a time when women’s wrestling in the US mainstream, particularly WWE, was effectively in the toilet, Ivory showed that talent, application and determination can set you head and shoulders above the rest.

Alongside Chyna, Ivory brought real wrestling to a division stocked to the brim with inexperienced models, Jerry Lawler’s girlfriends and Harvey Wippleman dressed in drag. Her induction of the WWE Hall Of Fame Class of 2018 is well deserved.