I remember the confusion and excitement I felt seeing “Captain” Lou Albano of the WWE (formerly called the WWF) appear in Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” music video when it premiered in December 1983.
Why was a wrestling star in a Cyndi Lauper video on MTV?
It turns out that Albano and Lauper were friends, having previously met on a flight from Puerto Rico to New York when she was with her band, Blue Angel.
When Lauper’s label, Portrait Records, released “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” her first single from her solo debut album She’s So Unusual, it wasn’t getting a lot of traction due to its limited radio play, because, as she told Howard Stern in 2012, her voice was considered too high.
Dave Wolff, Lauper’s manager, loved wrestling and came up with a cross-promotion scheme that was so crazy it might just work.
Wolff invited Albano to appear on “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” in an effort to widen Lauper’s audience.
Thanks to the success of this video and Lauper’s second single, “Time After Time,” on MTV, her career skyrocketed.
Then, on June 16, 1984, Lauper was a guest on the WWE’s Championship Wrestling segment, “Piper’s Pit.”
After host “Rowdy” Roddy Piper accused her of calling retired-wrestler-turned-manager Albano a liar about his claim that he was her manager (which he was not), Albano appeared behind her, taking credit for writing “Time After Time” and launching her career (also, he did not).
As Lauper defended herself, Piper and Albano continued to berate her. Then, out of nowhere, Lauper flipped the table in front of her, grabbed Albano by his vest, whacked him over the head with her “Loaded Purse of Doom,” and went after Piper. Lauper’s manager, Dave Wolf, ran out on stage to restrain her, pulling her off Piper and escorting her offstage.
This, of course, was all staged. Ah, those crazy pro wrestling storylines.
Thus, an unconventional partnership between MTV and WWE was born. Dubbed the “Rock ‘n’ Wrestling Connection,” this crossover blending wrestling and music helped propel the WWE into the mainstream, with storylines involving Lauper and Wolff in the WWE and Albano and other wrestling superstars guest-starring in other Lauper music videos, like “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough” in 1985.
Lauper became a regular, managing Wendi Richter in the WWE’s women’s division, a rival of the Fabulous Moolah, managed by Albano.
The two headlined “The Brawl to End It All,” which aired live from Madison Square Garden on MTV on July 23, 1984, with Richter defeating Moolah, becoming the WWE Women’s Champion. The event was the highest-rated MTV broadcast at the time.
Lauper again appeared at Madison Square Garden to accept a gold record from Dick Clark for her work as a women’s rights activist, and present Albano—with whom she had since become friends in real life and in their ongoing WWE storyline—with one for his charity work.
As it goes in the WWE, however, as new alliances are formed, old foes reemerge to cause chaos, which is exactly what happened when Piper entered the ring and smashed Lauper’s gold record over Albano’s head. Amid the chaos, Lauper clung to Piper’s legs in an effort to trip him. He kicked her away and picked up Wolff, who had accompanied Lauper to the ceremony, bodyslamming him to the canvas mat. Hogan—who died July 24, 2025—came to Lauper’s rescue.
This, of course, set up a new storyline at a second event, a sequel of sorts called “The War to Settle the Score,” which aired on MTV on February 18, 1985, and saw Hulk Hogan defend his WWE World Heavyweight Championship title against Piper. Lauper, of course, was there, as were other celebrities, including Danny DeVito, Mr. T, and yes, if you can believe it, Andy Warhol. Piper was disqualified after fellow bad-guy wrestlers Paul Orndorff and Bob Orton ambushed (wink, wink) Hogan, with Mr. T coming out of the audience to defend the Hulkster.
The groundwork for the WWE’s first and now most popular event, WrestleMania, had been laid.
On March 31, 1985, Hogan, this time with Mr. T as his partner, squared off with Piper and Orndorff in a tag team bout. Lauper was there managing Richter, who had just beaten Leilani Kai to regain her WWE Women’s Championship title, and to show support for her new friend, Hogan. Not only was the match a victory for Hogan and Mr. T., but it helped launch the WWE as a global megabrand with an at-home audience of more than four million spectators via pay-per-view.
For the next few years, Lauper’s connection with the WWE continued. She promoted Hogan’s Saturday morning cartoon show, Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling, and guest starred on the unbelievably terrible The Wrestling Album. Hogan even showed up at the 1985 Grammy Awards as Lauper’s (cough, cough) bodyguard, where she won Best New Artist.
In the same Howard Stern interview, Lauper said she enjoyed her time in the WWE because she felt it was the only place where she and Wolff worked as equals, and not as manager and artist.
Lauper continued making sporadic appearances in the WWE over the decades, most notably in a 2012 WWE Raw episode, where she memorialized Albano after his death in 2009. During the episode, Piper approached Lauper and gave her a gold record to replace the one he had smashed over Albano’s head almost 30 years earlier.
