By the time Sunshine was rolling around in pig slop with Missy Hyatt in front of 25,000 fans at the 1986 Parade of Champions, you could say the evolution of women’s roles in professional wrestling had taken a hard left off a Texas backroad. This was pro wrestling in the ‘80s—larger than life, louder than God, and about as subtle as a piledriver on concrete.
But make no mistake—Valerie French, the woman behind the name Sunshine, wasn’t some fluff-headed blonde who stumbled into wrestling like it was a beauty pageant gone wrong. She was a sparkplug in stilettos, a valet with the heart of a lioness and the political instincts of a backstage general. She didn’t just carry her men’s jackets—she carried their heat, their heat maps, and often their entire feuds on her five-foot-nothing shoulders.
She came into the business in 1982, brought in by her real-life cousin Jimmy Garvin to Championship Wrestling from Florida. Now, in most families, your cousin helps you move a couch or babysit a kid. But in wrestling? He makes you a character on live television, slaps some eye glitter on you, and sends you ringside to eat a Von Erich clothesline like it’s brunch in Fort Worth.
They called her Sunshine, and she was about as sunny as a Molotov cocktail in a hay barn.
The Golden Years in World Class: High Heels and Heel Heat
World Class Championship Wrestling was a lunatic asylum of kayfabe greatness, and Sunshine fit in like a mink coat at a dogfight. She debuted in 1983, managing Garvin as he waged holy war with David Von Erich, who was basically Texas royalty and wrestled like he’d never lost a bar fight. Sunshine was Garvin’s secret weapon—interfering, distracting refs, and causing enough chaos to make Jim Cornette look like a church usher.
That is, until David Von Erich got tired of the sideshow and gave her an old-school, down-home spanking in the middle of the ring.
You read that right. In 1983, a grown man bent over a valet and spanked her on TV. And it didn’t end there. In a classic humiliation angle, Garvin and Sunshine had to be “servants for a day” on David’s ranch. The footage aired on WCCW television and played like a mix between a soap opera and a sadistic sitcom. Garvin mucked stalls. Sunshine carried feed. If Cornette had booked it, they’d have been washing Von Erich’s longhorns in bikinis.
But Garvin soon tired of the act and swapped his cousin out for his wife, Precious, like it was a tag team of Stepford valets. Sunshine was out, the feud was on, and suddenly this wasn’t just wrestling—it was a Texas catfight wrapped in Noxzema and Aquanet.
Enter Chris Adams, the English pretty boy with the karate kicks and blue eyes that made Texas housewives swoon like it was Beatlemania. He and Sunshine teamed up to feud with Garvin and Precious in a storyline that blurred the lines between love triangle and nuclear meltdown. Forget romantic tension—this was emotional napalm.
The Feuds, the Madness, and Missy Hyatt’s Left Hook
By 1985, Sunshine was less a valet and more a manager of chaos. She feuded with Jim Cornette in a match that had every disadvantage in her favor—Cornette was blindfolded, had one arm tied behind his back, and was probably yelling about being unfairly treated by the booking committee the whole time.
And still, she pinned him.
But her signature war came with Missy Hyatt, the peroxide princess of wrestling’s coke-fueled glam era. Hyatt managed John Tatum, a man with hair like a nightclub promoter and charisma borrowed from a Marlboro ad. The two women made the squared circle look like Dynasty on steroids—fighting, interfering, clawing, and eventually rolling around in a literalpig-sty mud match at Texas Stadium.
Only in World Class would a women’s feud climax with the loser drowning in cow crap.
But don’t let the gimmicks fool you—Sunshine was taking bumps, driving stories, and earning white-hot heel heat every week. She was managing talents like Scott Casey, the Great Kabuki, and eventually The Missing Link—a man who looked like a cave troll with a concussion and acted like a drunk gorilla on Halloween. Their angle saw Kabuki betray her and the Link turn face in her defense, spraying perfume in Rick Rude’s eyes in one segment that was pure Southern-fried Shakespeare.
She wasn’t just eye candy. She was a pivot point.
And when you’re a woman in a male-dominated circus? That makes you a damn outlaw.
UWF, Wild West Wrestling, and the Exit Stage Left
After her feud with Hyatt ended—ending in yet another mud-slinging showdown—Sunshine moved to the Universal Wrestling Federation and linked up with the Fabulous Freebirds, proving she could hang with the most legendary degenerates in the game. If managing Garvin was like babysitting a drunk cousin at a family BBQ, managing Michael Hayes and Terry Gordy was like herding rabid raccoons through a strip club.
She did stints in Wild West Wrestling and made one last run managing Tatum and Jack Victory, circling back to The Missing Link like a good Southern tragedy always does.
But by the time UWF was being sold off to Jim Crockett Promotions in 1987, Sunshine had seen the writing on the wall—and probably spray-painted “Missy sucks!” on it.
She left the business not with a whisper but a “see y’all later” and a wink.
The Legacy: Glitter and Grit
Today, Valerie French lives quietly in Tampa, Florida. Married, mother, no mud matches scheduled. But in wrestling’s blood-and-glamour annals, Sunshine remains a pioneer—one of the first women who blended sex appeal, street smarts, and genuine wrestling psychology into a volatile, marketable package.
She didn’t just walk to the ring—she owned it. And in an era when most valets were either Barbie dolls or punching bags, Sunshine talked back, got physical, and turned every catfight into a storyline centerpiece.
In another life, she could’ve been a booker.
But she settled for being unforgettable.