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LITTLE ROCK — People who meet 42-year-old Michelle Finney of Benton might peg her as a wife, mother and community volunteer, but probably not a former professional wrestler.

But that's her other claim to fame.

In the 1980s, Finney was involved with two national women's wrestling organizations.

"It was kind of an odd thing," Finney said. "I wasn't a wrestling fan, I had no dreams of fame or recognition or being on TV, not even oneof those things," Finney said. "I was an athlete, and that's what got me going." A California native, she began her wrestling career as various characters in the Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling (GLOW), an all-female organization based out of Las Vegas whose matches were televised across the country in syndication.

Finney, 19 at the time, was an aerobics instructor at a fitness club owned by fitness guru Richard Simmons, teaching 14 aerobics classes per week.

A fellow instructor at the club was already working for GLOW and convinced Finney to join the group, which operated out of the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

Finney initially agreed to work for GLOW as a hair and makeup art ist but quick ly found herself in the ring under the persona "Dementia." She was a silent character with a white face and clad in an old, tattered wedding dress, which was brought to the ring in a cage, and she wore a hockey mask and wielded an axe.

"I worked out with the group the first day I got there," Finney said. "Before I knew it, I was Dementia, and that's pretty much how it started."

Along with the Dementia character, Finney also wrestled as "Sugar," a masked wrestler whose face was "burned," as the storyline went, by a pair of misfits known as Chainsaw and Spike, or collectively as The Heavy Metal Sisters.

As the storyline played out to set up Sugar as GLOW's first masked wrestler, Finney narrowly escaped serious injury as a result of a wardrobe malfunction.

"I was wearing this huge, blond, sy nthet ic w ig when Spike tur ned on her blow torch, and the thing immediately caught fire," Finney said. "They already had fire extinguishers on hand for the script, so I didn't get hurt, but it was probably the scariest thing that ever happened to me as a wrestler."

Finney spent only one season as a GLOW girl and left the promotion, as did many of the wrestlers, and returned to her home in California.

Not long after her departurefrom GLOW, she was contacted by her former promoter, David McLane, who had returned to his hometown of Indianapolis, Ind., to work for a touring promotion called POWW, Powerful Women of Wrestling.

"David brought several of us girls out to Indianapolis to train for a few months; then we went on tour and traveled the country with POWW," Finney said. "It was a lot different than being stationary in Vegas and filming only on Saturday afternoons at the same place."

While wrestling for GLOW, Finney and the other wrestlers' lives revolved around the Riviera Hotel.

" We lived t here, we ate there, we worked out there and we filmed the shows there," Finney said. "They were very strict, though, with protecting our characters and storylines so the 'good' girls and 'bad' girls were never allowed to interact."

Life at POWW was much different for the wrestlers, as they toured the country on a bus and wrestled in large arenas in bigger cities.

As opposed to wrestling in the same, small venue at the Riviera that would draw approximately 1,000 fans, Finney and the POWW wrestlers performed in front of thousands of fans in cities like Chicago and Birmingham, Ala.

It was in New York City, however, that Finney realized the magnitude of the POWW promotion, as they were preparing to wrestle at Madison Square Garden.

"We went out in the city the first night in New York and that was when it really hit me, the scope of actually doing this," Finney said. "They had those magazine racks out on the street, and that was the first time I had seen our pictures on the covers of magazines; it was a reality check for me."

While working for POWW, Finney gained notoriety under the moniker "Sasha the Russian," holding the POWW championship and tag-team championship.

Throughout the tour, Finney and friend Lisa Moretti, who wrestled as "Nina," worked together to entertain fans with a lasting feud. Finney, wrestling as Sasha, was POW W champion at the time and the two wrestled each other for weeks before Nina captured the title.

Many wrestling fans may be familiar with Moretti's most recent work as "Ivory" in World Wrestling Entertainment, formerly the WWF.

Finney has long since hung up her wrestling boots for life in Arkansas. After meeting her first husband, who lived in Arkansas, on the POWW tour, it was not long before Finney was pregnant with their first child, and she left the wrestling business behind.

It has been 20 years since she got in the ring.

"It was kind of a big step for me to tell people about my past, but it really didn't get a big reaction until people found me on YouTube, and then they found it interesting and started asking me about it," she said.

Her life is different now. She works full time as an office manager and stays active in the community. She is a volunteer administrator with theBryant Rotary Club, has served as a Sunday school teacher and sang in the church choir.

"My life revolves around my family," Finney said. "We play together, swim, fish and eat dinner together every night around the table and have breakfast together on the weekends."

She compared her family to The Brady Bunch. She has three stepdaughters, Melissa Fitzpatrick-Cano, 26, Samantha Finney, 10, and Sidney Finney, 15; a daughter, Taylor Fitzpatrick, 19; a son, Connor Fitzpatrick, 9; a stepson, Walter Finney, 4; and a stepgrandson, Marley Cano, 3.

Connor, a w restling fan himself, likes the idea of his mother being a wrestler.

"I think it's cool my mom was a wrestler," Connor said. "I tell my friends about it, but they think I'm totally lying until I show them pictures; then they believe me."

Samantha agreed.

"I think it's awesome my stepmom was a wrestler," Samantha said. "I think she's one of the best moms in the world." Finney credits professional wrestling as shaping her life today and leading her to The Natural State.

"I would say that wrestling was the single, biggest event that shaped the rest of my life," Finney said. "If I hadn't done it, I would never be here, and I loved every minute of it."