Rita Chatterton will forever go down in history as the first-ever female referee for WWE, decades before Jessika Carr and Aja Smith worked with the company.
Chatterton worked with the WWE, then the WWWF in the mid-1980s but left in 1986.
In a 1992 appearance on Geraldo Rivera\’s show Now It Can Be Told, Chatterton claimed her departure came after Vince McMahon sexually assaulted her in a limousine.
A Possible Return
Speaking to the Cheap Heat Production Podcast, Chatterton was asked if she would ever return to the industry following the alleged assault by McMahon (via Sportskeeda.)
\”I would consider it. It would depend on what it was. I never completely closed the door, I would never go back to work for Vince McMahon. But that doesn’t mean I hate wrestling. That doesn’t mean I’m down on wrestling. In fact, I have a little girl right now that I’m training, I’m helping to train.\”
I never completely closed the door, I would never go back to work for Vince McMahon
Rita Chatterton.
When asked if she was surprised by the allegations into McMahon, Chatterton said she\’s surprised that these allegations did not come out much earlier.
Training
Chatterton explained that the little girl she is helping to train is a young fan from a family of wrestling fans, who was told by a teacher that wrestling isn\’t a real job.
\”My daughter has a daycare and she used to babysit this little girl and her family is big time into wrestling. Last year, she went to school and they gave her an assignment to write an essay on what they wanted to be when they got older and to do the research on it. Well, her essay was done on, she wants to be a wrestling diva and she did the research. She checked into it. She took her essay to school and a teacher read it and said, ‘I’m sorry, this isn’t a real job and I won’t accept it.\”
