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Time of India
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Why are the makers of The Queen of the Ring accusing WWE of sabotaging promotional events?
(Image via X) The Queen of the Ring is an American biopic on the life of a female pro wrestler, Mildred Burke , who changed the scenario of professional wrestling forever. The movie is set in a time when pro wrestling for women was illegal all over the United States. The much-awaited biopic has been garnering a lot of fame since it has been out. However, the social media team and the makers behind the biopic Queen of the Ring , which tells the story of pioneering female wrestler Mildred Burke, have accused WWE of interfering with the film's promotional events . The biopic has already been garnering a lot of attention following its release on March 7, 2025. The film premiered at the Buffalo International Film Festival on October 15, 2024. However, it has stirred up a controversy recently after its official Twitter account deleted a tweet that accused WWE of trying to bury the film. But, what is the actual story behind this accusation of sabotaging the promotional events? The reason behind claiming that WWE sabotaged the promotional events by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Villas For Sale in Dubai Might Surprise You Villas in Dubai | Search Ads Get Info Undo The biopic, Queen of the Ring , has claimed recently that WWE has sabotaged the promotional events. They have pressed serious allegations against the company for not allowing them to run TV ads during RAW . This has resulted in a serious controversy. But, it has now come to light that they have deleted the tweet, taking back their words. Reports suggest that as a part of the promotional campaign, the film's official social media account stirred controversy by posting, 'The movie the WWE doesn't want you to see.' When asked why WWE would allegedly oppose the film, the account responded the following, 'You should ask them why they tried to block us from running TV ads during Raw (illegal), why they asked us to sponsor their events — we agreed to the financial deal — then they pulled us out last minute. This is just a glimpse into the sabotaging behavior. Perhaps we'll expand on the intel.' WWE has yet to comment on the allegations, but the controversy related to the biopic Queen of the Ring is raising questions about what happened behind the scenes. QUEEN OF THE RING Teaser - Out May 9! (Emily Bett Rickards, Josh Lucas, Walton Goggins) The accusations are serious, alleging that WWE not only blocked the movie from advertising during Monday Night Raw but also backed out of a sponsorship deal after financial terms had already been agreed upon. Also Read : Who is the Main Actor of Queen of the Ring? | WWE News - The Times of India Moreover, regarding the biopic, it is written and directed by Ash Avildsen and is based on the 2010 book, " The Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds, and the Making of an American Legend " by Jeff Leen and Burke's manuscripts. It was released in theatres earlier and is now available on the OTT platform Amazon Prime Video , only in selected locations. Get IPL 2025 match schedules , squads , points table , and live scores for CSK , MI , RCB , KKR , SRH , LSG , DC , GT , PBKS , and RR . Check the latest IPL Orange Cap and Purple Cap standings.
USA Today
08-03-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
The true story of 'Queen of the Ring' pro wrestler Mildred Burke
The true story of 'Queen of the Ring' pro wrestler Mildred Burke Show Caption Hide Caption 'Queen of the Ring': Wrestling icon Mildred Burke gets a biopic Emily Bett Rickards stars as women's wrestling pioneer Mildred Burke in the sports drama "Queen of the Ring," also starring Josh Lucas. Spoiler alert! We're discussing the ending of the sports biopic "Queen of the Ring" (in theaters now), so beware if you want to go in cold. Google Mildred Burke and you'll find vintage pictures of the pro wrestling icon showing off her impressive biceps. Those photos gave Emily Bett Rickards inspiration not only for what she needed to look like to play the pioneering athlete in the biopic 'Queen of the Ring' but also a way into her personality. 'Mildred put on this muscle in a time when it was not in vogue,' Rickards, 33, says of Burke, the first million-dollar female athlete and champion wrestler who was a major draw from the 1930s to the mid-1950s. 'There's a lot more women in the gym now, but at the time, women were not muscular. She wanted her femininity to coincide with this physical strength.' Join our Watch Party! Sign up to receive USA TODAY's movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox. So all the chicken breast Rickards ate and all the weights she lifted were worth it, the actress adds. 'Putting on the muscle was important for the physicality of her. But more so than that, it actually helped me find out who she was, because that's how she operated in the world. She's flexing in all her pictures because that was her showwomanship, that was her claim to fame.' Burke laid the foundation for modern champs like Becky Lynch and Toni Storm (who appears in 'Queen of the Ring' alongside other actual wrestlers). Rickards talks about what's real and what's fiction in the movie based on Jeff Leen's book "The Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds, and the Making of an American Legend": Did Mildred Burke really wrestle men? In the movie and in real life, Millie (born Mildred Bliss on Aug. 5, 1915) was a single mom working at a diner in the '30s when she met wrestling manager Billy Wolfe (played by Josh Lucas) and bugged him to show her the ropes. On her first day of training, he had a man body-slam her to scare her off – she turned around and slammed him. 'I was lifting dudes three times my size!' Rickards says of her wrestling scenes. 'A lot of the time when you're picking up someone, they're doing most of the work. It's wrestling, but it's an art form and it's so cool.' Because women wrestling other women was illegal in many states at the time, Wolfe turned Burke into a traveling carnival attraction, named 'the Kansas Cyclone,' who would take on guys in the audience and give them fits. 'They didn't believe that this woman in front of them stood a chance, and that's their fault and their problem because she showed them that she could,' Rickard says. Did the real Mildred Burke marry her manager Billy Wolfe? Wolfe rounded up a league of women to wrestle alongside Millie, who fought for equal pay with the male wrestlers she knew she could outdraw. She married Wolfe to make sure she had a financial stake in their business, and even dealt with his cheating and womanizing, but they wound up divorcing in the early '50s, which adversely affected Millie's finances and wrestling career. 'She did the best that she could but ultimately her downfall was not knowing the inner workings of business because she wasn't allowed in the room,' Rickards says Did Mildred Burke really beat her much-bigger foe? In wrestling, every great babyface needs an equally good heel, and Burke had that in June Byers, aka 'the Texas Tornado' (who was also Wolfe's daughter-in-law). The real Byers was bigger in stature than Burke, so powerhouse Kailey Latimer was cast as June opposite Rickards because 'it was supposed to be impossible for Mildred to beat this woman,' Rickards says. The movie's climax involves the controversial 1954 bout in Atlanta between the two, which turned into a 'shoot' match instead of a worked one – or, in wrestling parlance, a real physical fight instead of a scripted throwdown. The rousing film version ends with Millie keeping her championship belt with a no-contest decision. In real life, the ending was a bit hazier – while Burke believed she was the winner, the Atlanta Athletic Commission awarded the title to Byers. Rickards finds what happened afterward fascinating: Burke traveled to Japan to pioneer women's wrestling there, plus 'we end our story right as the age of television is taking off,' the actress says. 'And unfortunately, that is why Mildred gets forgotten. That is really at the fault of Billy Wolfe, who didn't believe that television was going to be a large thing for wrestling but clearly that did not go as he planned.'
New York Times
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Queen of the Ring' Review: Fighting for Respect
In 'The Queen of the Ring,' an overlong sports drama based on a true story, Mildred Burke (Emily Bett Rickards) is a waitress in the 1930s aspiring to something more. She overcomes the odds to become a champion wrestler in an era when American women were largely confined to cooking and cleaning. It's a middling entry into the biographical sports movie genre, and the director, Ash Avildsen, cannot resist pummeling his audience with a simplistic girl-power message. Rather randomly, Mildred stumbles upon a wrestling match in Kansas City and proclaims the sport her destiny. The story continues chronologically, tracking Mildred and her manager turned husband Billy Wolfe (Josh Lucas) as they graduate from circus sideshows to professional matches to national renown. The screenplay, featuring dialogue exchanged in varying degrees of Southern drawls, is stuffed with spunky speeches about wrestling being a boys club. These moments amplify drama, but the script's greater feat is a quiet attention to how women flocked to wrestling for its performative possibilities. It posits that 'lady wrestlers,' as they called themselves, saw the ring as a stage, and the sport as an escape from dull domesticity. In its plot-heavy second half, 'The Queen of the Ring' loses coherence when it speeds through a storyline about rival women's leagues and sidelines characters it had only recently introduced. The muddle causes any sincere emotion to turn into schlock. One senses that Avildsen was desperate to pack an emotional punch, but he could have pulled a few instead. Queen of the RingRated PG-13 for violence, in and out of the ring. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. In theaters.
