This was a post that I had saved for a day that I didn't have time to write but wanted to put something up!
Ladies wrestling in that age was different than what it became in the days of the Monday night wars and what it is today.
The outfits weren't revealing (usually a one-piece similar to a bathing suit) and the ladies weren't featured every week on television either.
In the territorial days, women's wrestling was looked at by promoters as a 'Special Attraction' (the 'midget' wrestlers as they were called back then were used in the same manner) and they were used on the cards maybe two or three times a year.
Also, the ladies were usually used in a tag team match since the ladies champion the Fabulous Moolah (who trained and booked the lady grapplers) rarely defended that title in a singles match, which had a positive that four women got paid to wrestle instead of just two.
The matches had their patterns that were unique to the ladies, which were usually chest-first smashes into the turnbuckle and hair pulls that turned into snapmares, but they weren't any less visual than the men's matches for the most part, except for the aging Moolah, who was pushing 60 and it showed pretty visibly during the matches.
Still, if you were a fan for a while, you could watch those matches and "see" what was coming, but there was one of them that stood out to me more than the others.
Lelani Kai was her name and despite not being Hawaiian, she was dubbed as such, she had a rougher, aggressive style than the others and seemed a little more realistic (or her moves weren't as easy to see through as others) to me.
Kai and a few others brought a faster-paced and more athletic style to the ring and when Moolah wasn't involved, the matches took on a quicker pace with more action and less stalling-which meant a more entertaining match.
Now, I'm a person that doesn't really watch pro wrestling anymore, so too much of a good thing can be well, not so good, and there can be a real argument that wrestling now has almost gotten too athletic-based and might be better suited to attempt to slow the pace a bit.
When I was a young fan, it seemed like Moolah would hold her title (which she never seemed to defend, another red flag to a youngster on pro wrestling's legitimacy) forever ( as I didn't know at the time-Moolah actually owned the championship), which even though I wasn't a fan, it was still surprising when Wendi Richter upset Moolah for the championship.
Richter brought a younger, flashier wrestler, which was perfect for the changing times in pro wrestling, to the forefront of their division, but the WWF certainly wasn't going to have too many matches with the plodding Moolah against the younger Richter-that would have meant not being able to change the style to what was needed.
That meant Richter needed a good opponent, one that could help change the style and perception along with providing entertaining matches-enter Leilani Kai.
The political pull of the Fabulous Moolah necessitated her being involved somehow, so she was the manager of Kai in her matches with Richter as her protege'.
Kai would upset Richter to hold the title for a month leading into the first Wrestlemania, where she would drop the belt back to Richter, who the division was being built around before being abruptly ended after a financial disagreement with the McMahon's, who pulled a double-cross on her with off all people-Moolah under a black bodysuit as the Spider.
I didn't follow the WWF nearly closely after that.
The UWF started to have a local network pick up their show and the difference for me was glaring in style, if not talent and once I was able to watch the Crockett territory, I watched even less.
I don't remember much about her team with Judy Martin (the Glamour Girls managed by Jimmy Hart) other than bleaching her hair and one great match on a pay-per-view that we all pitched in bought, against the Japanese Jumping Bomb Angels, as I was watching even less WWF by that point.
Wikipedia can tell you more than I about Kai's career after that as the WWF phased out the women's division and I slowly phased out of pro wrestling interest other than occasional matches as I scanned the television.
It was funny, I hadn't thought of Kai for a while and saw someone on my timeline mention her on Twitter and it made me decide to enter her in the Forgotten Superstars universe as the only ladies wrestler that I liked to watch when pro wrestling was most important to me.
I'm not sure Lelani Kai was the best ladies wrestler ever. I'm not qualified enough to make that claim.
I didn't see all that many of that group and I never watched the all-ladies group, but she was the one that best used the style that I liked to watch most and therefore the most memorable and best to me.
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