The Fabulous Moolah's Real Name: Mary Lillian Ellison

Quick answer: The Fabulous Moolah's real name was Mary Lillian Ellison. She was born on July 22, 1923, in Kershaw County, South Carolina, and died on November 2, 2007. The Fabulous Moolah was her ring name.

Birth name and ring name

The New York Times obituary and WWE's Hall of Fame materials identify Mary Lillian Ellison—often shortened to Lillian Ellison in company bios—as the woman billed as The Fabulous Moolah (NYT; WWE; WrestlingData). She told in her memoir The Fabulous Moolah: First Goddess of the Squared Circle that a promoter pushed her away from wrestling under her birth name. Earlier ring identities included Slave Girl Moolah before the Fabulous Moolah billing stuck.

Ellison grew up near Columbia, South Carolina, the youngest of several siblings. After her mother died, her father took her to wrestling shows; she later trained under figures including Mildred Burke and Mae Young and debuted around the late 1940s.

Championship record and WWE years

In 1956 she won a battle royal for the vacant NWA World Women's Championship and became the title's dominant holder for decades—WWE and contemporary reporting cite a reign measured in the high twenties of years as a defining (if disputed in later historiography) claim to the longest combined women's world-title tenure in the sport. She was among the first women to wrestle at Madison Square Garden after promotional lobbying against bans on women's matches.

In the 1980s Rock 'n' Wrestling era she worked WWF storylines opposite Cyndi Lauper and Wendi Richter, including the 1984 Brawl to End It All title change on MTV. She regained the WWF Women's Championship in later angles and, in 1999 at age 76, won the title again—making her the oldest WWE champion to that point. WWE inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 1995, the first woman so honored. She continued sporadic comedy appearances with Mae Young into the 2000s; her final WWE sighting was around SummerSlam 2007. She died that November in South Carolina at 84 (NYT; WWE).

Later reporting and wrestler accounts have also examined contested aspects of how she ran women's wrestling as a gatekeeper and trainer; this page centers documented name and publicly established career milestones from major obituaries and WWE's official biography.

The Fabulous Moolah memoir First Goddess of the Squared Circle WWE Hall of Fame / women's wrestling history books Rock 'n' Wrestling era documentary DVDs