Wrestling Legend Dies at 70: Joyce Grable Was an NWA Hall of Famer

Joyce Grable, a professional wrestling legend who made her biggest impact in the NWA, died on Sept. 29. She was 70 years old. According to Figthful, Grable’s family confirmed her death a few days after it had been reported that she entered hospice care. 

Grable (real name Betty Wade-Murphy) made her pro wrestling debut in 1971 and was named after the first Joyce Grable who had wrestled in the 1960s and 1970s. She spent the majority of her career in NWA and won the NWA Texas Women’s Championship, the NWA United States Women’s Championship and the NWA World Women’s Tag Team Championship six times. She won the tag team title three times with Vicki Williams and three more times with Wendi Richter. Grable would also compete in the WWWF (now WWE), Stampede Wrestling, World Wrestling Council and the AWA. She retired in 1991 and was inducted into the NWA Hall of Fame in 2012.

Sadly I just got off the phone with Leilani who confirmed that Joyce passed away this morning. My deepest condolences to her family. Our business truly lost one of the greats today https://t.co/RkmLhiwFhh pic.twitter.com/TxcXQuniuS

— Roy Lucier (@roylucier) September 29, 2023

Last year, Grable won the Courage Award from the Cauliflower Alley Club. She was diagnosed with leukemia in 2013 and talked about the diagnosis during the award ceremony. “Well, before you do the transplant, you need to go through a heart doctor, a liver doctor, a kidney doctor, all these doctors,” she said, per Slam Wrestling. “I put it off until I went into the Hall of Fame in New York. I was inducted and the next week, I went in for the bone marrow. I lost all my hair, ugly, bald woman, I mean, I looked like Mumbles from Dick Tracy. Ugly.

“Here I am and all these doctors are coming in at Emory. But the heart doctor comes in, and he says, ‘I’m your heart doctor, and I’ve got to tell you this before you go through your bone marrow transplant, I saw some of your matches on YouTube, and looked at your echo, you were born with only two valves in your heart. The third valve never developed. You should have died in your first match. There’s no way you could have wrestled 20 years. ‘ I said, ‘I did!’ Somebody was up there taking care of me. He said, ‘If you live through this bone marrow transplant, we’ll fix your heart. But first, you’ve got to pull through this.’ That made me dig in. I was stronger, a lot of tears, but I got through it. A year later, thank goodness, they put a pig’s valve in my heart, so now I have a pig valve. No wonder I’m fat!”