She came from the pages of Penthouse and walked straight into a barbed wire opera—blonde, bruised, barefoot, and never apologizing. Beulah McGillicutty wasn’t just a valet in pro wrestling’s most volatile promotion—she was the bullet in the gun, the lipstick on the hammer, the woman who bled and crawled her way into infamy during ECW’s whiskey-drenched golden age.
Before the lights and the chants and the broken tables, she was Trisa Hayes, a girl from Muskegon, Michigan—just another face from another cold American town that specializes in broken dreams and pawned engagement rings. She didn’t come up through the territories or the dojos. She came through Prince’s tour bus and Brian Pillman’s arm, dropped into Stampede Wrestling in 1988 as a one-night prop in a feud that nobody remembers anymore.
But ECW remembered her.
It was 1995 when Paul Heyman, the mad conductor of Philadelphia’s symphony of violence, saw something in her. Maybe it was the way she could weaponize a glance. Maybe it was the tension she carried in her shoulders, like someone who knew how to endure but not forgive. Or maybe it was the simple truth: she looked like sin and moved like salvation.
So she was reborn. Not Trisa. Not a dancer. Not a girlfriend.
Beulah.
Beulah Goddamn McGillicutty.
The gimmick was pure ECW acid-trip storytelling: she’d been the fat camp girl rejected by Tommy Dreamer, who then shacked up with Raven out of vengeance and returned to ECW all grown up, a Penthouse model draped in lust and spite. She was vengeance in high heels, a weapon with a pulse. She helped Raven win his matches and took Dreamer’s piledrivers like communion.
It should’ve been a footnote. But it wasn’t.
Because Beulah wasn’t content to be arm candy.
She got in the ring. Threw hands. Took bumps. She bled. And in ECW, if you bled, you belonged.
Her feud with Francine was a catfight on paper, but in the ring it felt like two thunderclouds crashing together—raw, loud, and inevitable. Luna Vachon? That was a blood feud with eyeliner. They traded chairs, kicks, and the kind of stares you can only earn through real hatred or really good storytelling.
At House Party in ’96, Beulah dropped the mother of all bombs—claimed she was pregnant with Dreamer’s kid. The crowd lost their collective minds, and ECW spun it like Shakespeare in a dive bar. Then came the swerve: she wasn’t pregnant, and she was cheating on Dreamer… with Raven’s new valet Kimona Wanalaya.
Cue the kiss. Cue the madness. Cue Dreamer grinning through the sleaze and declaring, “I’ll take ‘em both! I’m hardcore!”
It was trashy. It was brilliant. It was ECW.
And Beulah didn’t flinch.
She stepped into mixed tags with Dreamer, hitting moonsaults like she had a death wish and something to prove. But her magnum opus came in 1997, not in a storyline or a promo, but in a match against Bill Alfonso.
That wasn’t wrestling. That was a crime scene.
Alfonso bled like a pig at a slaughterhouse—collapsed lungs, crimson canvas, and screams echoing in the bingo hall like a horror movie with the sound turned all the way up. Beulah stood her ground, threw forearms, and walked through the fire with mascara running down her cheeks and a middle finger aimed at the world.
Heyman later said it was one of the most brutal matches in ECW history. Of course it was. You don’t fake that kind of chaos. You earn it.
And then… she disappeared.
In ’98, Justin Credible assaulted her on TV—another cheap shot in a feud already soaked in venom. A few months later, The Dudley Boyz wrote her out of ECW with a Dudley Death Drop that supposedly broke her neck. It was an exit, sure. But it wasn’t goodbye.
She came back for One Night Stand in 2005, looking like she’d stepped right out of a time machine, all fury and elegance and Philly grit. She catfought with Francine. Took a spear from Edge in 2006 so vulgar it made Jerry Lawler flinch. Returned again in 2010 for Hardcore Justice, delivering a low blow to Raven like a love letter wrapped in barbed wire.
And then, in 2014, she did what so few wrestlers have the grace to do—she walked away.
At House of Hardcore 7, Beulah came down the ramp one last time, her husband Tommy Dreamer bleeding like it was ’97 again, and she got into it with Velvet Sky for old time’s sake. After the match, she took the mic, thanked the crowd, and disappeared into the sunset, like the final shot of a noir film—damaged, mythic, and untouchable.
But the ring isn’t the end of her story.
After ECW, Trisa Hayes went back to school. Married Dreamer in 2002 at a country club in Eastchester, New York. Had twin girls, Brianna and Kimberly, who played Tony Soprano’s niece in The Sopranos—because of course they did. That’s the kind of strange, beautiful serendipity that follows women like Beulah.
In 2012, she wrote a children’s book, Gertrude the Great. Think about that for a second—a woman who once bled beside Bill Alfonso in a bingo hall now penning bedtime stories. It’s not a contradiction. It’s the evolution of a warrior.
Beulah McGillicutty wasn’t just a valet. She was a moment. A mood. A middle finger wrapped in velvet.
She came from Penthouse. Landed in ECW. Left with her dignity intact and a few scars no one can see.
The business will remember her as hardcore. But the truth is, she was just real.
And in wrestling, that’s the rarest thing of all.
