Rene Vicary

Sometime in 1983 I discovered Cavalier magazine, an adult magazine whose content included erotic wrestling material. If I recall correctly, mostly stories and perhaps some pictorials.
The cool part was that they had advertisements on the last page and that was how I discovered the Golden Girls women's wrestling video production company.

When I received their catalog in the mail, one of the first images I saw was of a busty blond having leg scissors applied to her mid-section.
It was Rene Vicary, AkA the California Angel and it was, of course, love at first site!!! VCRs were still in the very early stages back then. As I didn't own one, I started off with some photo sets. The stills were of really high quality for that time and were the best ones I had ever seen in my life. Rene was the hottest woman wrestler I had ever seen in my life.
The nice thing about stills is that you can play with the order and create the kind of sequences you want to see- up to a point.
It would be about 4 years later until I was able to see my first video, and up until then I just had to make "storylines" up in my head.
When I finally bought my first tape, it was, obviously, one with Rene. I can't remember the tape number, but it was a Golden Girls match against Shelly Berg in her pre enhancement and pre Burbank Bomber days. Shelly, by the way, will surely come up again in this blog sometime soon.
The video was both amazing and disappointing. Amazing because I hadn't really seen mch wrestling action until then. The only matches I had seen were brief WWF matches with Wendi Richter & Lei Lani Kai and some other snippets on TV.
This was a high quality, well lit video and I loved it! To a point though and I'll try and clarify this a little bit.
For one, I had created a persona for Rene in my mind. When I saw her the first time on video, she obviously was nothing like the character I created. Not better or worse, just different.
Another problem I had with that, and almost all other videos at the time, was that I am simply not nearly as interested in submission as I am in pro stlye. On the other hand....
Rene was sizzling hot! Shelly was great too. Rene lost the match as I had hoped, and she lost it nicely.
Rene will always be among my all time favorites, mainly because she was one of the first.
She was excellent at playing the heel, but her acting left a bit to be desired when she was on the receiving side. As I have mentioned before, the true skill lies in the abiltity to convincingly "sell" a beating. Rene was mediocre at this at best. Still, she had the "look." She projected power and confidence and appeared to be someone who realistically should never be defeated. Just the way I like it.
Over the years, Rene lost to Shelly, Spice (twice), Belinda, and Elsa as far as I know. There are probably 1-2 of her matches that I haven't seen.
Unfortunately, Rene did not do nearly as many videos as the other superstars she came up with, so her back catalog is not very extensive, especially when compared to Shelly & Belinda Belle for example.
I guess that just makes her videos all the more special.