The history of World Championship Wrestling is fraught with missed opportunities amid all the things they did right. One of the biggest misses was its handling of women. While the company always had valets and the like, the in-ring female competition left a lot to be desired. There were memorable female competitors like inaugural WCW Women’s Champion Akira Hokuto, Daffney, and Miss Elizabeth wrestling a handful of matches in the later years, not to mention moments like Madusa dropping the WWE Women’s Championship in a trash can.
However, there were also a number of other notable women who stepped into a WCW ring who have gone completely forgotten.
10 Sherri Martel
Best known for working as valet to Randy Savage and Shawn Michaels in WWE and later to Ric Flair and Harlem Heat in WCW, Sherri Martel was also an in-ring competitor in her own right, enjoying a 441-days as champion in WWE. It’s easy to forget that she wrestled in WCW too, with her first foray being at 1995’s Clash of Champions 31, where she teamed with Harlem Heat in a trios match against the Stud Stable. The following year brought matches against Madusa and Colonel Robert Parker, but in 2000 she made a brief return to the company, wrestling a couple of televised matches.
9 Malia Hosaka
Trained by Killer Kowalski, the very underrated Malia Hosaka is a former NWA Women’s World Champion whose 21st-century work includes wrestling for Shine, Shimmer, and other women’s indie promotions. But in 1996, she was part of the WCW’s burgeoning women’s division, taking part in tournaments for both the WCW Women’s Title and the Women’s Cruiserweight Title. She ended up wrestling 10 matches total before moving on from the company in 1998, and would eventually show up in WWE and TNA with even worse results.
8 Sunny
Wrestling fans of the 1990s remember Sunny as the WWE manager of The Bodydonnas and later LOD 2000, not to mention (to far lesser extents) The Godwinns and The Smoking Gunns via various betrayals. But she would eventually leave WCW with Bodydonna Skip (a.k.a. Chris Candido) to ECW and, in 2000, WCW.
Billed as Tammy Sytch, her partnership with Candido would continue in WCW, but she would also wrestle a few matches during her time there. While she’d mostly team up with Candido in mixed tag bouts, she did end up taking on Paisley in a singles match during a feud between their respective male counterparts, Candido and The Artist Formerly Known as Prince Iaukea.
7 Bull Nakano
A legend of the 1990s Japanese joshi scene, Bull Nakano’s best known in the West for having an awesome match with Madusa at SummerSlam 1994 as part of WWE’s rebooted women’s division. Nakano would show up in WCW in 1995 and 1996 but was never in contention for the women’s title. In fact, her biggest match would be a five-minute match against Madusa at Road Wild 1996, where the loser was allowed to destroy the winner’s motorcycle for some reason.
6 Debbie Combs
The daughter of legendary wrestler Cora Combs, Debbie Combs was a notable star in the late 1970s and early 1980s, becoming a three-time NWA Women’s World Champion and two-time women’s champion in USWA, as well as repeatedly challenging for the WWE Women’s Title in the late 1980s.
In WCW, Combs showed up twice on television as the promotion was establishing a women’s division, the first being a loss to Madusa on Saturday Night. In March of 1997, Debbie Combs made her second appearance, unsuccessfully challenging Akira Hokuto for the Women’s Championship.
5 Luna Vachon
Considering Luna Vachon is best known for her early 1990s and late 1990s runs with WWE, fans could be forgiven for forgetting that she ever appeared in WCW -- especially because she only had one televised match. A thorn in Madusa’s side going back to WWE, Vachon would repeatedly interfere in her rival’s attempts to capture the Women’s Title from Akira Hokuto. This would lead to a match between the two women at Slamboree ‘97, where Madusa would beat Luna Vachon in five minutes.
4 Rhonda Singh
Ronda Singh was an absolute beast in her younger days working under the name Monster Ripper in All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling, but WWE fans in the 1990s experienced her as the comedy character Bertha Faye, who had a 57-day run as Women’s Champion while feuding with Madusa. Before her untimely death in 2001, Singh had a brief run in WCW.
The Rhonda Singh of WCW was also a comedy character who wrestled matches when she wasn’t working as a Nitro Girl named “Beef.” During her brief run, she rekindled her feud with Madusa, challenged Norman Smiley for the Hardcore Title, and would end up wrestling her last match ever, losing to Miss Elizabeth.
3 Meiko Satomura
Western fans know Meiko Satomura via her appearances in WWE’s Mae Young Classic and NXT UK, where she’s touted as the Final Boss that any wrestler worth her salt must overcome. But in 1996, Satomura was a rookie in GAEA Japan who made some appearances in WCW thanks to a working relationship between the two promotions. The future founder of Sendai Girls would be knocked out of the first round to crown the inaugural WCW Women’s Champion by eventual winner Akira Hokuto and later lose to Toshie Uematsu in the semifinals to crown the first Women’s Cruiserweight Champion.
2 Leilani Kai
Trained by the infamous, controversial Fabulous Moolah, Leilani Kai would be a staple of 1980s WWE, becoming a Women’s Champion in 1985 and later winning two Women’s Tag Team Titles alongside Judy Martin as The Glamour Girls. After a couple of WCW matches against Madusa in 1991, Kai would return to the promotion in 1996, wrestling house show bouts against Madusa and losing to Malia Hosaka on a 1997 episode of Saturday Night. Her final match would occur on a July 1999 episode of Monday Nitro, where she’d lose to Madusa while working under the ring name “Patty Stone Grinder” for some reason.
1 Molly Holly
Molly Holly would find her most success in WWE, where she’d become a two-time Women’s Champion and 2021 Hall of Famer, but before that, she had a solid run in WCW. Initially debuting under the name Starla Saxton, she’d undergo a couple of reinventions, first as Randy Savage’s valet Miss Madness and then getting over as a babyface named Mona. As Mona, she’d be a staple of WCW programming from mid-1999 to mid-2000, and it seemed like a new women’s division was on the horizon before budget cuts led to her release.