Before there was GLOW on Netflix, there was GLOW in smoke-filled arenas. And before there was a women’s revolution in wrestling, there was Deanna Booher — better known to the cult faithful as Matilda the Hun, a leather-clad cyclone of screams, sweat, and raw meat who made you believe monsters were real… and proudly wore lipstick.
She didn’t just break the mold. She crushed it beneath a 315-pound frame, belted a scream into the rafters, and body-splashed the ruins.
A Force of Nature, Not a Character
Born Deanna White on August 6, 1948, in Torrance, California, Booher didn’t walk into pro wrestling — she bulldozed her way in through roller derby, mud wrestling, and a side hustle that included everything from stunt work to phone sex to singing telegrams that ended with suplexes. She was six-foot-three with a glare that could dent chrome and a laugh that came with thunder.
Wrestling didn’t find her. She found it, beat it into shape, and named it Queen Kong.
A Villain in the Golden Age of Camp
When Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling debuted in 1986, co-created by David McLane and helmed by director Matt Cimber, Booher was there from the start — not just as a performer, but as a recruiter, trainer, and even the writer of the show’s theme song.
And when she hit the ring as Matilda the Hun, children cried. Grown men blinked. She chewed raw meat between matches and snarled like a Wagnerian war goddess who’d just come back from a bar brawl.
“She was everything Vince McMahon didn’t want from a woman wrestler,” one promoter said. “Which is exactly why she mattered.”
Her signature move was a big splash — a human avalanche inspired by British legend Big Daddy. The kind of maneuver you feel in your spine even from the cheap seats.
Beyond GLOW: The Road Less Glamorous
After two years, she left GLOW to form Powerful Women of Wrestling, a bold misfire with more heart than budget. The ring didn’t last, but the bruises did. When her in-ring days ended, Booher didn’t fade away — she just switched mediums.
She made a career out of being too much for any screen to handle: the bearded lady in Spaceballs, a gang enforcer in Cage, a hulking nurse, a bouncer, a party guest who looked like she ate other party guests for breakfast.
She lifted dwarfs on her shoulders in Aerosmith videos and punched through scenery in sitcoms. She never “played big.” She was big — in size, in heart, in the sheer force of her personality.
Wrestling Didn’t Kill Her, But It Didn’t Help
By the 2010s, Booher had a motorized wheelchair and a spine held together by grit and memory. Lupus and peripheral neuropathy plagued her final years. She died in January 2022, aged 73, surrounded not by flashing lights, but by family.
Still, the roar never stopped.
In 2024, Matilda the Hun: The Raw Meat — a stage tribute to her life — premiered at the Zephyr Theatre in Hollywood. It won awards, earned tears, and reminded people that women like Booher didn’t just kick down doors. They chewed through the damn walls.
Glamazon. Trailblazer. Riot in Boots.
Booher wrote a memoir in 2014 titled Glamazon Queen Kong: My Life of Glitter, Guts, and Glory. It’s a fitting title. Deanna Booher wasn’t pretty wrestling. She was punk rock wrestling. She was the grindhouse B-side to WWE’s polished pop single. A war cry in a world full of whispers.
And now that she’s gone, the ring’s a little quieter, the lights a little dimmer, and the raw meat a little less raw.
But somewhere — in the echo of a slap, in the flash of an elbow drop, in the laugh of a girl who refuses to be small — Matilda the Hun still stomps. Still snarls. Still reminds us that women in wrestling didn’t start with revolution hashtags.
They started with pain, personality, and Deanna Booher.
The original monster heel.
The queen of glitter, guts, and Goddamn glory.