Miss Kitty, Lovely Stacy, whatever they called her — she wasn’t trained to wrestle so much as perform. And perform she did, like a firecracker in stilettos during wrestling’s wildest puberty: the Attitude Era. This was the late ‘90s, when Vince McMahon’s circus was being run by the inmates and the women were rarely asked to wrestle, but often asked to strip, catfight, or get hit with a guitar.
Carter didn’t grow up dreaming of gold belts and main events. She met Jerry Lawler at a charity softball game in 1989. He was a king in Memphis wrestling. She was just out of high school. Their affair started like a scandal and snowballed into a backstage power couple. By 1998, Lawler had muscled her into the business through Power Pro Wrestling. She wasn’t a lifer. She was a muse dressed like a Miss America contestant, shoved into a world where blood, sweat, and spandex shared the same zip code.
Her official WWF debut came in August 1999, as “Miss Kitty,” a valet so sugary sweet she could rot your teeth just walking past the monitor. She started as an assistant to Debra — another bottle-blonde with cleavage and contracts — and was soon orbiting Jeff Jarrett’s shrinking planet until Jarrett took a walk and Carter attached herself to Chyna like a blonde shadow in black leather. Suddenly, Miss Kitty was lifting weights and wearing wigs. The WWF had no idea what to do with her, so they did what they always did — tossed her into the fire in a dress and told her to make noise.
At Armageddon ‘99, Miss Kitty stripped her way into the record books in a Four Corners Evening Gown Pool match — the kind of match that couldn’t even be aired today without a parental warning and a priest on standby. She won the WWF Women’s Championship not with wrestling ability, but with well-timed undressing. Then, in a moment that would cement her place in the vault of wrestling’s sleaziest golden moments, she flashed the crowd post-match. No script. No permission. Just a flash of defiance in a company drunk on ratings and testosterone.
And that was the thing about The Kat. For all her lack of technical polish, for all her backstage drama, for all the eye-rolls from purists — she knew what her character was. She was the scandal. The blonde bombshell that made no apologies. She wore bubble wrap to the Miss Royal Rumble swimsuit contest, got slimed in chocolate pudding matches, and paraded through Raw like a femme fatale in a Fellini fever dream.
But she wasn’t a fool. She knew the camera only loved you while your tan was fresh and your storyline was hot. The moment the backstage winds shifted, you were meat. Her rivalry with Terri Runnels became the stuff of tabloid lunacy — catfights, stinkfaces, arm wrestling contests that ended with topless grins. They weren’t building careers; they were burning calories and ratings.
Then came the Right to Censor — a stable of moral puritans who acted like the FCC armed with steel chairs. The Kat became the anti-censorship crusader, waving the flag for nudity and freedom of expression, like a Vegas showgirl turned libertarian warrior. But backstage politics don’t care about storylines. One day you’re on TV protesting prudery, the next Vince McMahon decides he doesn’t like your attitude and Jim Ross is telling you, “Vince wants her gone. Today.”
And just like that, she was gone.
No big farewell. No emotional retirement speech. Just a note that The Kat had been released and that her husband, Jerry Lawler, had quit in protest. Lawler called it loyalty. Others whispered about attitude problems. Either way, the door slammed shut in February 2001, and it was clear she’d pissed off the wrong old man in the wrong mood on the wrong Monday.
But she wasn’t quite done. In 2010, she showed up on the independent circuit, wrestling mixed tags and arm wrestling dudes named “Pissed Off Pete.” She married freakshow wrestler Sinn Bodhi (formerly Kizarny), got walked down the aisle by Jimmy Hart, and honeymooned between wrestling appearances like a couple of carnies living on Red Bull and glitter dreams. That ended in divorce too.
She dabbled in real estate, popped up in WWE documentaries, and remained one of those curiosities in wrestling’s attic. Not forgotten. Not revered. But remembered in a way that left you wondering if any of it ever really happened. Like some wild VHS memory burned into your frontal lobe between chair shots and Limp Bizkit montages.
She was the one-time WWF Women’s Champion who never pinned anybody with a headlock. The blonde who flashed the crowd before OnlyFans made it cool. She was part of the problem, the solution, and the reason half the fans tuned in to begin with.
Stacy Carter wasn’t a wrestling legend in the traditional sense. She didn’t put in twenty years on the road or redefine in-ring psychology. But she walked into one of the most chaotic eras in sports entertainment, blew kisses at the boys’ club, and walked out with her name inked in the fine print of wrestling history — and for a girl from West Memphis with no plan beyond tomorrow, that was one hell of a trick.
The Kat wasn’t the best wrestler. She wasn’t the most respected. But for a few wild months under the bright lights and cheap thrills of the Attitude Era, she was the show. And in wrestling, that’s more than enough.