In the bar-fight symphony of 1980s and ’90s pro wrestling, Debbie Combs wasn’t just another pretty face in a headlock—she was a bruiser with bloodlines and brass knuckles in her DNA.
Born Deborah Szostecki on April 18, 1959, she entered the world not with a silver spoon in her mouth but a suplex in her future. Her mother, the legendary Cora Combs, was one of Billy Wolfe’s last living disciples and a woman who once fought her own daughter under a mask as Lady Satan. For Debbie, pro wrestling wasn’t a dream—it was an inheritance.
She made her in-ring debut at just 16 at the Louisville Gardens in a seven-woman battle royal for Angelo Poffo’s ICW—a teenage lamb tossed into a pit of seasoned lions. She was the first eliminated. Not exactly the stuff of prophecy, but Combs didn’t need divine whispers—just time and grit. She came up through the back roads of wrestling, wearing the same boots for miles across territories that smelled like stale popcorn and blood.
Somewhere along the line, she started dating Randy “Macho Man” Savage. Five years. That’s a whole war, a full album cycle, a presidential term—and it speaks volumes. You don’t survive in Savage’s world unless you’re made of fire and sharp metal.
By the mid-1980s, Debbie was more than Cora’s kid—she was the NWA World Women’s Champion, a title she first won in Hawaii via battle royal, then re-secured in Kansas City against Penny Mitchell. But as with most things in wrestling, politics followed like a bad back injury. The Kansas City promotion seceded from the NWA, folded up shop, and her title was quietly erased by the cigar-chomping suits in the back office. Misty Blue Simmes was given a shiny new title in her place. It was corporate sleight of hand—the kind that eats away at legacies unless you keep fighting.
And Debbie did. She challenged Simmes in 1989, but Simmes, sporting a busted wing, couldn’t answer the bell. A match that could’ve rewritten the lineage of women’s wrestling instead became a ghost story.
Combs wore many colors across many banners. In the AWA, she began as a smiling babyface, wrestling the ruthless Sherri Martel, but later turned heel and joined forces with Madusa Miceli—two sirens of steel with matching agendas. The feud with Heidi Lee Morgan and Brandi Mae was a no-frills, beer-bottle-busting affair—a parking lot brawl in tights.
In 1986–87, she entered the high-gloss, high-spot circus of WWF, back when women’s wrestling was treated like an intermission act between Hogan promos. She went toe-to-toe with The Fabulous Moolah and Sherri Martel, always a half-step from glory but never outclassed. She returned again in 1994 for a brief showdown with Alundra Blayze, intended to culminate at WrestleMania X—but wrestling giveth and wrestling taketh away. Leilani Kai took her place. Another big stage denied.
Then came WCW. A strange time. The Monday Night Wars were raging, but WCW’s women’s division was treated like a footnote. On the March 31, 1997 edition of Nitro, Combs lost to Akira Hokuto in a match that felt more like a formality than a contest. The brass knew what they had in Hokuto. They never figured out what they had in Combs.
But maybe Debbie knew that all along.
In the early ’90s, while others were clinging to relevance, she became the president and booker of Women’s Pro Wrestling (WPW)—an all-female indie fed that produced direct-to-video tapes before streaming was even a fever dream. She assembled a roster of female talent so legit it could’ve knocked over a biker bar: Bambi, Malia Hosaka, Lisa Starr, Jackie Moore, and more. It was grassroots grit, bootstrapped feminism in elbow pads, and proof that Combs wasn’t just a wrestler—she was an architect for women’s wrestling’s survival.
When the cameras stopped rolling and the boots came off for good, Combs didn’t chase the limelight. She clocked in at the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office in Nashville, booking the real-life outlaws. The squared circle gave her chaos. The badge gave her control.
Debbie Combs wasn’t flashy. She wasn’t a household name. But if wrestling were judged by miles driven, matches wrestled, and rings slept under—she’d be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
And in time, she was.
Hall of Fames and Honors? She’s got them:
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NWA World Women’s Champion (multiple times across promotions)
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AWF, IWA, UCW, MCW, USWA—all with gold around her waist
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Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame, Class of 2020
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St. Louis Wrestling Hall of Fame, 2019
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Cauliflower Alley Club Honoree, 1992
Combs was never the golden child. She was the road-hardened veteran who stuck around when the spotlight moved on. She lived the grind, wrestled through eras that ignored or minimized women, and left behind a blueprint in sweat.
Like a cigarette flicked into the night sky of wrestling history, Debbie Combs burned quiet but long. Not a flash. A fuse.