I'm greeted at the door by a vision in white slacks and a leopard skin silk top. Her hair is dyed reddish blond and styled just so; her make-up is of the old-fashioned, Southern Belle variety -- lots of base, eye shadow and lipstick.

"Hi, sweetie," she says, and clasps my outstretched hand warmly but firmly in both of hers. Her hands are adorned by several big, flashy rings, one of which is a diamond-studded dollar sign; it matches the emblem hanging from her gold necklace -- she'd look right at home working the slot machines in Vegas. She exudes a youthful energy and, considering that her career started during Harry S. Truman's presidency, she looks amazingly fit and healthy. She is none other than the one, the only, The Fabulous Moolah, the most famous professional female wrestler of all time.

The Fabulous Moolah was a pioneer in a rough and oftentimes sleazy business long before it became the slick, big-bucks "sports entertainment" spectacle it is today. During her career as a "lady wrestler," she brought real talent and dedication, and more respect, to what had been an oddball sidelight of the wrestling scene. In the process, she met and befriended a bevy of larger-than-life characters and celebrities, including Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and, according to her, ex-fiance Hank Williams, Sr. Today, at 79, she's still kicking ass and taking names, and continues to run a women's wrestling school from her home, located, appropriately enough, on Moolah Drive, in Columbia, SC.

"Where would you like to sit, honey?" she asks, as I'm invited inside. For that afternoon my given name no longer exists. I'm either "darlin'," "sweetie," or "honey." And actually, I like it. The house has curiously low ceilings, and was at one time probably relatively modest, but since Moolah bought the property in 1975, it's gone through a series of renovations, giving it a sprawling, rambling feel. Moolah escorts me through a cozy living room, its walls covered with mostly black and white photographs: There's Moolah dressed in revealing leopard skin; Moolah flying through the air above the wrestling ring; Moolah applying the sleeper hold; Moolah proudly displaying the WWF Women's Championship belt. The photographs document a career that has lasted over six decades.

We make our way through the living room and into the kitchen, and I notice a woman about four feet tall milling about in the back of the house. That, it turns out, is Katie Glass, a.k.a. Diamond Lil (a.k.a. "my damned midget," as she was introduced on The Daily Show with John Stewart). Glass is one of The Fabulous Moolah's many wrestling proteges.

Once in the kitchen, I'm introduced to an elderly woman preparing lunch at the oven. It's Mae Young, another female wrestling pioneer, who helped train Moolah in the early days of her career. She greets me just as warmly as Moolah. If they had offered me milk and cookies I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised. Mae Young, Diamond Lil and The Fabulous Moolah have lived here together for over a decade, and yes, it's as strange -- but also welcoming and friendly -- as it sounds.

From Slave Girl To Fabulous

The Fabulous Moolah's real name is Lillian Ellison, and she's a curious mix of grandmotherly sweetness and showbiz razzmatazz, a Hollywood throwback to tough old broads with a heart of gold. A cliche perhaps, but in her case, completely fitting.

We take a seat at the small kitchen table, and I ask her if she prefers to be called by her birth name, or her wrestling moniker.

"I don't care if you call me Moolah, Fabulous, Lillian, or Ms. Ellison, but if you write me a check, just make sure it doesn't bounce," she says, laughing heartily.

Moolah, um, Ellison grew up in Tookiedoo, South Carolina, the youngest of 13 children, and the only girl. She was 8 when her mom died of cancer. By the age of 10, she was working at her cousin's farm picking cotton.

"I got paid a penny a pound," Ellison says. "I would go out early in the morning because the dew would be on the cotton, and it would be heavier. I'd pick 100 pounds a day and get my $1. I was buying my own school clothes by the time I was 12. I was always very independent."

Her father, befuddled about how to cheer up his only daughter after her mother's death, started taking her to the local Tuesday night wrestling matches. Ellison got one look at Mildred Burke (the most popular "lady rassler" of that era), and saw her future.

"It was like, "Wow! Women can do that?' Right then, I knew what I wanted to be. My dad just laughed -- he didn't take me seriously."

Ellison's wrestling career wasn't to begin just yet, though. There was romance in the air by way of a young man named Walter Carroll, who always let Ellison drive his shiny new Ford home from school.

"Walter kept saying, "Let's run away and get married.' I thought, well, I wouldn't have to look at all my brothers, and my dad couldn't tell me what to do anymore, so we eloped."

At the time, Ellison was just 14, Walter, 21. The marriage lasted less than two years. "It was a mistake," Ellison says. "I should have stayed at home."

Although the marriage didn't last, the young couple had a daughter, Mary. "She was more or less like my sister," Ellison says. "We basically grew up together."

Ellison began to focus once again on wrestling, despite the fact that her dad said she should stay home and take care of her baby. But Ellison couldn't help herself -- she was determined to be a star.

For awhile, she wrestled for Billy Wolfe, a notorious promoter who dominated women's wrestling at the time. Wolfe was married to Mildred Burke but played the field freely, and even suggested to some of his wrestlers that they sleep with competing promoters to get paying gigs in new towns. Ellison found Wolfe "a despicable human being," and refused to go along with his suggestions, but for a time, she was stuck fighting for a man who "treated us like pieces of meat. . .you'd get 50 dollars a week whether you wrestled once or 20 times. And it was more often 20 times."

It was Ellison's next romance -- wrestling star Johnny Long -- that really kick-started her career.

"Johnny had a natural, muscled-up body. He looked like Joe Palooka. He was really gorgeous. When he started teaching me about the wrestling business, things started happening."

Long trained Ellison -- something Wolfe never bothered to do -- and before long she began showing up as a "valet" for male wrestlers, introduced to the crowd as a "slave girl," dressed in her trademark leopard skin outfit. But the woman who got into the business for the "moolah" wouldn't remain a valet for long. She fought her first professional match in 1949 at the Boston Arena.

"I remember that night real well," she says. "I got the hell beat out of me. This girl, she was over 200 pounds, and there I was, like 120. But she knew I was there."

Ellison and Long soon became the dynamic duo of wrestling, traveling across the country and mixing it up in the ring. Soon, they opened a wrestling school for women, and began promoting many of the wrestlers they trained, including one unforgettable character named Lady Angel.

"I was in Jacksonville, Florida, and after my match there was a knock on the door," Ellison says. "I opened it and there was this huge woman standing in front of me. She was bald, had scars all over her face and her nose was missing -- she was scary looking. She had walked into an airplane propeller. She looked down at me and said "I want to be a lady wrestler.' Her name was Tommi Huckaby. I named her The Lady Angel."

Soon, The Fabulous Moolah, Lady Angel, and "The Elephant Boy," a giant Hispanic man with a massive afro, were traveling the road together. Promoters began hyping them as the "band of freaks" and, of course, their popularity grew.

The Champ And The Stars

Ellison's career may have been gaining momentum, but her marriage wasn't faring as well. The combination of her independent spirit, Long's womanizing, and his new demands that she give up her career and stay home, didn't make for a good combination, and they soon divorced.

In her autobiography, The Fabulous Moolah, she writes, "I always told Johnny, "I'm gonna pursue my profession.' In fact, I used to say that a lot, and I'd get a kick over just how uncomfortable it would make men."

By the time this proto-feminist grappler and Long divorced, The Fabulous Moolah's career was on the fast track. She won the WWF (now WWE) Women's Championship in 1956 during a 13-woman Battle Royal in Baltimore. During her reign as women's champion, she rubbed elbows with some famous and infamous celebrities, including a young truck driver named Elvis Presley.

"He used to come to the matches in Memphis every Monday night," Ellison says. "He was a really sweet kid, a momma's boy. But you could tell something was different about him.

"After we'd get through wrestling, he'd ask us to come see him play at the little honkytonks around Memphis," Ellison continues. "He thought it would make him look bigger having a bunch of lady wrestlers in the audience. And we would always go because we loved him to death. We really enjoyed his singing. I think he wanted to be a wrestler. But after Tom Parker met him and showed him all the money he could get from singing, he was gone."

Moolah also befriended the infamous Jerry Lee Lewis in Memphis. "He was sweet and nice, but also a wild man," she says. "He reminded me a lot of Elvis. We'd be eating at a restaurant and all of a sudden music would start playing and he'd jump on the table and start singing and dancing."

Before meeting Elvis and Jerry Lee, Ellison had gotten serious about another music legend. Early in her career, while on the road wrestling in Oklahoma, Ellison and a group of friends went to a performance by Hank Williams.

"I had grown up on country music, and Hank Williams was my favorite," Ellison says. "I was really excited about seeing him."

She was even more excited when she was invited backstage after the show.

"He had just gotten divorced from Audrey, and we started dating. But after about a year I could tell it wouldn't work out. He was on the road seven days a week and under a lot of stress. It was hard on him. When he would get to drinking and mix it with other stuff, he would get really. . .demanding. What broke us up was, he said, "Lilly, when you become Mrs. Hank Williams, you can forget about this damn wrestling.' I said, "I beg your pardon.' It was over after that. A lot of times I feel sorry that happened, but it was for the best.

"I was really married to wrestling from my first match," Ellison continued. "When I met somebody, unless they were a promoter or somebody big in wrestling, I would forget about them in five minutes. They weren't going to make my living. I could see myself in the cotton fields again, and I didn't want to be there."

The life of a professional female wrestler wasn't an easy one during Ellison's era, even for a champion. She spent decades traveling the road in a grueling succession of one-night stands and hard knocks.

"Women wrestlers [in the early days] were like the novelty acts," she says. "You couldn't really make any money. We might drive from Columbia to Washington, DC, for a match, and the payoff would be $25. Then we'd have to turn around and drive back that same night because we wouldn't have any money for a hotel. It was tough, but I loved it."

Despite her sultry image, Ellison was strictly about the wrestling. "I ate, slept and breathed wrestling. There was no drinking, no smoking, and no partying. I'm an old-fashioned girl; I conducted myself like a lady, and wouldn't put up with any nonsense."

Golden Years, Cindi Lauper, & The Comeback

Ellison's career took another turn when she married Buddy Lee, a wrestler with many business connections throughout the South, and the pair started Girl Wrestling Enterprises (GWE) in the 60s. The timing was right, as promoter Billy Wolfe had died in 1962, leaving women's wrestling in disarray. Penny Banner, another wrestling legend who has lived in Charlotte for around three decades, was considered the women's champion by the American Wrestling Association, while Moolah held the WWF title. Both organizations were in rough shape. In stepped Ellison and Lee -- their GWE turned into a booking and training machine specifically run for women wrestlers. GWE survived Ellison's divorce from Lee, and by the late 60s, the organization boasted the largest group of women wrestlers in the US. During the 70s and much of the 80s, GWE was, in effect, one of the foundations of pro women's wrestling. Consequently, Ellison, or The Fabulous Moolah, was generally recognized as the queen of women's wrestling. This was in spite of, or perhaps because of, her ring image as a "heel"; unlike her predecessor champs, Mildred Burke and June Byers, Moolah riled the crowd with ring tactics that included stomping, choking, hair pulling, using foreign objects, you name it. She wasn't one of the fans' darlings, but she was the one they would always pay to see in case someone could beat her. For a long time, no one ever could.

Ellison's long reign as WWF Women's Champion came to an end in 1984 when a certain eccentric singer who just wanted to have fun got involved.

"It was when that Cindi Lauper girl came into the picture," Ellison says. "I called her Little Turkey Neck. She caused me to lose the match. I was wrestling Wendi Richter. Cindi kept running in and out of the ring distracting the referee, and he counted me out. I still say I wasn't pinned. I got Cindi by the throat, and her boyfriend started screaming "Please, don't, you're going to ruin her voice.' I said "what voice?!'"

As professional wrestling grew bigger and more extravagant, with multi-million dollar productions like WrestleMania and Smackdown, Ellison faded into the background, and focused more on her wrestling school. However, the spotlight beckoned once again when WWE President Vince McMahon called and offered her a comeback match. By the late 80s, women's wrestling was being phased out by the WWF. Their women's champion was a wrestler named Ivory. In a body-slamming, hair-pulling, dropkicking battle, the now 76-year-old Fabulous Moolah pinned the WWF Champion in a 1999 nationally televised grudge match before a sold-out Cleveland arena. Unbelievably, The Fabulous Moolah was back. It turned out to be the last time she would appear in the ring for a major wrestling promotion.

Not one to sit still, her revived status as women's champion prompted her to write her autobiography, The Fabulous Moolah, First Goddess of The Squared Circle.

As we sit together in her kitchen, Ellison picks up a copy of her book and proudly hands it over. The cover shows her at 17, dressed in her leopard skin outfit, wearing big, gold, clunky jewelry, including a snake band around her arm. With her pouty red lips and smoldering eyes, she looks a bit like a dark-haired Jean Harlow. On the back it shows her 60 years later, dressed in a green leotard and displaying the WWF Championship belt, just after she won it back in 1999.

"I haven't changed that much," she opines. "Only the color of my hair, and you can buy that in the store."

I ask her how she feels about today's "sports entertainment" wrestling industry compared with the business back in her day.

"I like it," she says. "A lot of the old-timers don't, but 40, 50 years ago, you'd see two guys lying in the middle of the ring for 90 minutes holding each other's legs and grunting. Who wants to sit in a hot arena and watch that for two hours? It's disgusting. But now it's like a big movie production. If you blink, you're going to miss the action."

We step outside, and stroll across the front yard to a barn-like building where Ellison trains her wrestling students -- usually around a dozen at any given time. In the center of the big, airy structure is a standard wrestling ring. Again, the walls are covered with photographs showing Ellison during various stages of her career. She grabs hold of the rubbery ropes stretched across the perimeter of the ring and gives them a couple of good tugs. It's obvious she feels good in here -- proud, happy, and relaxed. Ellison's body has taken quite a beating over her career, but it doesn't seem to have slowed her down.

"I've had broken ankles, fingers, ribs, collarbones and cauliflower ears. But that's what makes coming back so much fun -- you get even with people."

In fact, she hopes to exact a little revenge come July 22 for her 80th birthday if WWE president Vince McMahon grants her another match. Before I leave, I ask her what, at age 79 and the great-grandmother of six, still compels her to get in the ring and mix it up.

"Wrestling is my first love; I'm married to wrestling, and I'll be that way as long as I live," she says. "I also want to show all these senior citizens that they don't have to sit back in a rocking chair and wait to die. I mean get up and go, baby! I'm ready to rumble."

Contact Sam Boykin at sam.boykin@cln.com