Nicole Bass, 45, a former NPC bodybuilding champion and one-time pro wrestling valet, has now taken her long-standing lawsuit against WWE to the U.S. Court of Appeals. She had filed for a motion for relief in New York Eastern District Court on 3/24 relating to a 2003 judgment but the case was tossed out without WWE even responding.
WWE attorney Jerry McDevitt said this week that he doesn’t expect the appeal to go anywhere as the case is now time-barred under the applicable statute of limitations. After abruptly leaving the company in 1999, Bass filed a suit for sexual harassment, claiming she was sexually assaulted on a flight to England by Steve Lombardi (The Brooklyn Brawler). The case was partly dismissed in 2003 following a circus of a trial which saw McDevitt role out various people to testify against Bass including Vince McMahon, Triple H, Lisa Moretti (Ivory) and Jacqueline Moore.
McDevitt picked apart inconsistencies in Bass’ stories and asserted that she was fired because she was a terrible wrestler. Bass claimed back then that male wrestlers would often walk into the women’s locker room and that she was repeatedly accosted by WWE agents Steve Lombardi and Tony Guerra, referee Earl Hebner, and wrestlers Big Show and Billy Gunn, while she was in a state of undress. Regarding the flight to England, she alleged that Lombardi came on to her and grabbed her breasts. She said she didn’t report any incident to WWE officials at the time because she feared retribution.
She claimed shortly after wards she suffered several acts of retribution including death threats and an angle where she had agreed to be hit over the head with a “fixed” guitar, but was told later that the guitar was intentionally left unfixed to see how tough she was. She also claimed that WWE violated the Equal Pay Act in failing to pay her wages comparable to those of its male talent. Bass has largely fallen off the radar in recent years although last we heard
in 2006 she was in the hospital due to steroid influenced pancreatitis.
(credit: The Wrestling Globe Newsletter)