Jeannine Mjoseth didn’t need to cut her hair into a green mohawk to get noticed—but she did. She didn’t need to walk into the World Wrestling Federation dressed like an apocalypse survivor from a punk biker gang—but she did that, too. She didn’t need wrestling, not in the way most people do. That’s what made her dangerous. And that’s what made her vanish.
They called her Mad Maxine, this towering six-foot-four amazon with fists like cinder blocks and a soul wired for revolution. For a flash of time in 1985, she was the strangest thing on Vince McMahon’s traveling circus—a Storm from the X-Men in leather and attitude, built like a linebacker and trained in the swamplands of Moolah’s plantation. She could’ve been a champion. She could’ve been a cartoon. She could’ve been a star.
She didn’t want to be.
The Mohawked Meteor
Born on the move—West Germany, army brat, restless blood—Mjoseth was destined to orbit outside the status quo. She played basketball for the University of Kentucky, then burned the scholarship like a road map to nowhere. She waited tables, chased stories, wrote angry words in underground papers. Journalism was her church. Truth was her poison. Then she met wrestling—and it was like a car crash she couldn’t look away from.
She trained under The Fabulous Moolah in South Carolina—an education in pain and politics. And when the time came to make her name, she sewed her own gear, spiked her hair into a war cry, and stepped between the ropes as Mad Maxine. The gimmick was part sci-fi dominatrix, part post-nuclear Valkyrie. There was no template for her. She wasn’t eye candy. She was the damn toothache.
In March 1985, she debuted on WWF’s All American Wrestling, flattening Susan Starr while Moolah leered ringside. A few weeks later, she ran through Desiree Petersen. The idea, allegedly, was for Maxine to feud with Wendi Richter. She was supposed to be the next monster heel—a challenger that looked like she could deadlift a Buick and eat Richter for breakfast.
But the feud never happened.
Why?
Because this wasn’t some wide-eyed rookie willing to let Moolah siphon off her soul and her paychecks. Maxine wanted more. She wanted proper training. She wanted control over her own damn career. Moolah wanted 25% and blind loyalty. So Maxine split.
Before she left, her image had already been drafted for the Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling cartoon. A spiked-haired biker queen named “Mad Maxine Ryder” with a punk-cycle and a contract signed in ink and silence. She was supposed to be the first female cartoon star of the Rock ‘n’ Wrestling era.
Instead, Moolah got the gig.
Maxine Hits the Road—and Hits Back
Florida. The swamp circuit. The blood-and-grit years. Mjoseth reinvented herself as Lady Maxine and wrestled for Championship Wrestling from Florida under the booking of Wahoo McDaniel. She aligned with Luna Vachon and Peggy Lee Pringle—three women in varying states of fury and charisma. She feuded with Percy Pringle and his sister. She took on Luna. She didn’t need a rocket push—she was a firework in a minefield.
She moved on to Continental Championship Wrestling as a bodyguard for Norvell Austin, trading fists with Adrian Street and Miss Linda in a feud that felt like an acid trip gone wrong. Then it was the UWF, where she managed Jack Victory and brawled with Dark Journey in a series of brawls that were more alley fight than angle.
The final match? A mixed tag match: Maxine and Victory vs. Journey and Koko Ware. Then, just like that, she was gone. Out of the smoke. Out of the spotlight. No retirement speech. No valedictory slam.
She had one suplex left—and she used it to throw the whole business behind her.
Bukowski Would’ve Liked Her
Jeannine Mjoseth didn’t die in a trailer park surrounded by expired gimmicks and empty pill bottles like too many of her peers. She walked out of the business with her brains intact, dignity still kicking, and middle fingers up.
She became a journalist again. A real one. Editor of The Black News, where she infiltrated a Ku Klux Klan rally for a story. She worked for the National Institute of Aging, founded art programs, curated galleries, spoke truth to power. She even appeared on HBO’s Real Sex curating an erotic art auction—because why the hell not?
She worked for the National Human Genome Research Institute—yes, that genome project—and ran the comms department. This wasn’t a career pivot. This was someone leaving the circus, setting the tent on fire behind her, and getting a job at NASA.
She also wrote a novel, The Chronicles of Mad Maxine, based on her brief time in wrestling—because even if you try to leave the business behind, it never really lets go. Like cigarette smoke in a thrift store coat, it lingers.
Legacy of a Ghost
No belts. No Hall of Fame ring. No farewell tour.
Just impact.
Mad Maxine didn’t break glass ceilings—she trampled over them, then threw the shards back at the office. She was too wild for Vince’s cartoon machine. Too smart for Moolah’s plantation politics. Too real for a business that thrives on illusion.
She was a lightning storm that passed through wrestling and left it a little weirder, a little louder, and—maybe—just a little braver for the women that followed.
If the business was a bottle of cheap bourbon, Maxine was the one who drank once, spat it out, and walked away sober.
And that, in a world of addicts, is about as badass as it gets.