Mae Young passes away.

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It's being reported that Mae did indeed pass away this morning.

Legendary women's pro wrestling star Mae Young died early Thursday morning at her Columbia home at the age of 90.

Known to millions of fans worldwide as the Amazing Mae Young, she was born Johnnie Mae Young on March 23, 1923, in Sand Springs, Okla., although some friends insist that her actual birthdate was several years earlier.







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A highly touted athlete in high school, Young broke into the pro ranks at the tender age of 15, joining a fraternity of women whose grit and toughness would be profiled decades later in "Lipstick and Dynamite," a 2005 documentary that shone a spotlight on the forgotten first ladies of wrestling who lived hard and fought even harder, blazing a trail on the wrestling circuit and paving the way for future generations.

Young, who broke into the business in 1939, was the first-ever NWA U.S. women's champion and participated in the profession over a remarkable span of nine decades.

She earned a widespread reputation for being one of the toughest, street-savvy workers in the business - and that included men and women.

Young perhaps gained her greatest notoriety when she and longtime friend, perennial women's world champion The Fabulous Moolah (Lillian Ellison), made an appearance on a WWE Smackdown show in 1999, 60 years after Young's entree into the profession.

Moolah was laid out by a guitar while Young was put in a figure four leglock. Both were in their 70s by then, but from that time on they would make semi-regular appearances on WWE television where they became fan favorites.

Although their bits on the show were mostly of a comedic nature, Young would survive power bombs from male wrestlers nearly half a century younger and would even win WWE's Miss Royal Rumble in 2000 at the age of 77.

That same year Young took part in an over-the-top storyline where she dated WWE star Mark Henry, announced that she was "pregnant" and later gave birth to a rubber hand.

Young was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2007 along with Moolah, with whom she shared a home and wrestling complex in Columbia where hundreds of aspiring wrestlers - male and female -trained under two of wrestling's greatest women grapplers.

Young had helped Ellison, who passed away in 2007, break into the sport decades earlier.

"She was in California and had lost all of her family, and I told her this big place was just sitting here and she could have the whole upstairs," Ellison once said.

For years the two, both members of the Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame, were delightful hosts at the Columbia estate and reservoirs of grappling history.