Stallone Rockets - Russia's Early 1990s Version of GLOW

A women's wrestling show in Russia in 1991-1992 that Jackie Stallone was associated with.

The year was 1990. The Perestroika was in full effect. More and more western concepts were starting to make their way to the Soviet Union. One of those concepts was American style professional wrestling as 1990 saw the first tour of that kind in the USSR. Another example of the trend was the show we're about to discuss in this article. This is the story of a Soviet entrepreneur with an interesting career trajectory teaming up with Jacqueline Stallone to launch a Russian women's wrestling show, inspired by the Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling.

Before we start the story, I have to make a quick note. The wrestling project in question received a good amount of coverage in the Russian press. I will trace the story of the project as it was reported in the press back then. Some of the stuff, however, is impossible to verify so keep that in mind as you're reading the story. I'll try to separate fact from media hype as best as I can.

Stallone Rockets - Russia's Early 1990s Version of GLOW

A moment from one of the Stallone Rockets shows - "Freddy Krueger" stalks her victim
Photo credit: Oleg Lastochkin

Our story starts with a man by the name of Sergey Sokolov. Born in 1953 in Tashkent (the capital of the Soviet republic of Uzbekistan), Sergey eventually moved to Moscow where in the 1970s he became involved in the music and entertainment business. Sergey and his wife at the time, Elena Sokolova, were aspiring musicians and in 1985 they, along with some others, formed the hard rock/heavy metal band Dubl-1. Elena was the lead singer of the band, and was often touted as the first female lead in the Soviet Union's emerging hard rock and heavy metal scene, while Sergey was the keyboardist of the band. Dubl-1 disbanded in 1987 and in 1988 Elena headed a new hard rock/heavy metal band called Markiza, which ended up being much more successful than Dubl-1. Sergey was not part of the new band on stage, but behind the scenes he was Markiza's manager.

The band Dubl-1 (Sergey Sokolov on the keyboard)

Another interesting background detail on Sergey Sokolov is related to one of the most iconic music concerts ever - 1991's "Monsters of Rock" festival in Moscow, which featured Metallica, AC/DC and Pantera. Often 1989's "Moscow Music Peace Festival" is quoted as the predecessor to 1991's "Monsters of Rock" and in a lot of ways it was because it was the first truly international music festival in the Soviet Union as it featured a number of very popular international acts (Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe, Scorpions and Ozzy Osbourne to name a few). However, there was also "Monsters of Rock USSR". In 1989 a Russian version of the well-known UK heavy metal magazine "Metal Hammer" started being published in the Soviet Union and Sergey Sokolov was one of the two guys running the magazine. Only a couple of weeks after the "Moscow Music Peace Festival", the Russian "Metal Hammer" (i.e. Sergey Sokolov and his partner Sergey Kuleshov) organized a brand new festival called "Monsters of Rock USSR" in the city of Cherepovets, and then the following year there were another two "Monsters of Rock USSR" festivals in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The line-up was entirely made up of Soviet hard rock and heavy metal bands, including the aforementioned Markiza. It's not clear whether he was involved in the first one, but the Russian music manager/producer Boris Zosimov and his company BIZ Express were involved in the organization of the second and third festival. That same Boris Zosimov would become the key person on the Soviet side in organizing the iconic "Monsters of Rock" in 1991. So in a way, one could make a case that Sergey Sokolov partially helped lay the foundation that "Monsters of Rock" 1991 was built on. That's enough background information on Sokolov for now. We'll circle back around to him at the end of the article and look at the wild turn his life took later on. Back to our main story. 

The other key name in the story was Jacqueline Stallone. She was, of course, the mother of Sylvester Stallone, who at that time was one of the most famous movie stars in the world, and was a popular name in Russia too. Jackie Stallone had already been involved in professional wrestling as she was famously a character on the American women's wrestling show GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling). In 1990 she was also part of a PPV/VHS release called Stallone's Knockouts, which was pretty much GLOW but with boxing instead of wrestling.

There are different claims as to how the Sokolov-Stallone connection came to be. The most popular version is that Sokolov had come up with the idea for a women's wrestling show himself and when Jackie Stallone visited Russia at the start of the 1990s he approached her about being part of the project. Another version is that he didn't meet her in person, but rather sent her a tape of his girls training for the show and that's what caught Jackie's attention. I do also have to mention that according to a 2017 Russian book about Sokolov, he first approached Jackie Stallone at a dinner party, hosted by the President of the Soviet Union at the time Mikhail Gorbachev, which Sokolov had managed to weasel himself into, despite not being invited to it, and it was there that the idea for the show was born when Sergey and Jackie got to talking. I'm very skeptical of that claim, but it is worth noting. Either way, whichever version is true, by June 1991 the Stallone name was officially attached to the project. Jackie Stallone became the public face of the show while Sokolov was the creative director and running the whole project. I don't believe Jackie had any involvement in the day-to-day affairs or the creative vision for the show. Everything I've read has led to me to believe Sokolov was 100% in charge.

Reportedly, the show originated in December 1990, however, it was officially announced to the public in June 1991 and that's when its name was revealed as well - Stallone Rockets (Сталлоне Рокетс in Russian). From the onset it was crystal clear Stallone Rockets was conceived as a Russian variant of GLOW, with some additional emphasis being placed on martial arts and live music, and without any of the campy backstage skits. In fact, in the initial newspaper stories the new Sokolov-Stallone women's wrestling show was also referred to as Proud Ladies of Wrestling (Гордые леди рестлинга in Russian), but that name was dropped very quickly. From 10 June 1991 onward for a few days there were auditions for Stallone Rockets held in Moscow. I think at that point they already had a few women training and this was them recruiting more performers for the show. The casting announcement in the press emphasized that they were looking for professional ballet dancers and music groups. Markiza and another lesser-known band had already been brought onboard for the project (sitenote: The Markiza frontwoman Elena and Sergey had divorced by that point and Sergey had a new wife, Maria, who who was in charge of creating the entrance costumes and in-ring gear of the performers). The casting announcement claimed that Stallone Rockets had already been purchased for international distribution and the group would be touring Yugoslavia, Korea, Brazil, Spain, England, and Germany. A bit later the United States was added to the list too. That part about extensive international touring was definitely not true, but that's what they were saying. There was also talk that several American women were headed to Moscow to be part of the show, but that didn't happen either. Finally, it was also said that Sylvester Stallone himself was going to come to Moscow for the show along with his mother. I very much doubt Sylvester Stallone coming to Moscow was ever in the works, but it did make for some good initial publicity. 

The show was announced as a collaboration between the companies Escortt International Ltd. and Jacqueline Stallone Enterprises. The latter was, of course, Jackie Stallone's business entity, but there's no information whatsoever about the former. I searched and that company appears only in relation to the Stallone Rockets show. One article suggested that the All-Union Association of Soviet Koreans was behind it. I've only see that claim in one article though and nowhere else so it's tough to say if it's true. That association was a cultural organization formed around 1990 to represent Soviet Koreans in the USSR and it was involved a few different businesses. By the time the debut show came around a few months later, Stallone Rockets had a presenting sponsor - a company called Unona Laser. That was a Russian company in the business of developing and manufacturing laser technology and equipment, originally for the medical field, and then for show business too. Ultimately, Unona Laser was the main financial backer of the project.

The Stallone Rockets announcement in the press was soon thereafter followed up by a television commercial, which we can see below. The commercial aired on the TV channel 2x2. At the time 2x2 was the only commercial TV channel in the Soviet Union, as all other TV channels were state-owned, and it was a popular channel among younger people in particular, albeit a channel with a limited reach (it was available mainly in Moscow and the surrounding area). As you will see below, the TV commercial for Stallone Rockets featured footage from Sylvester Stallone's movie "Rambo III" as well as GLOW. It also announced some additional things.

The first Russian television commercial for Stallone Rockets:

Original source of the video: https://vkvideo.ru/video-196083610_456246311

The commercial above says: "Sensation! In September, the famous Rocky will visit Moscow. The legendary Sylvester and his mother, Jacqueline, are bringing the show Stallone Rockets to the USSR. The program features the best girls from Stallone's Knockouts, the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, the Broadway ballet 'Pelican', and the Barcelona Theater 'Fashion'. From the Soviet side, the best hard and heavy bands Markiza, the group Silver Communicator, and a team of tough fighting girls from Soviet wrestling, belonging to the Escortt company, which, incidentally, is organizing this show together with Jacqueline Stallone Enterprises. Attention Soviet musicians and managers! The organizing company and the 2x2 TV channel are holding a competition for the participation of Soviet musical groups in the Stallone Rockets program. Contest terms: transfer five thousand rubles to our…"[the video cuts off here]

Yes, not only were they advertising that Sylvester Stallone was coming to Moscow, but they were now also saying that women from Stallone's Knockouts and GLOW were headed to Moscow too. Neither happened. For what it's worth, in a later interview with the Russian press, Jackie Stallone claimed the American women didn't come, because the two sides couldn't come to financial terms. The American side was asking for $800 a week per woman (which would be about $1,900 in 2026 money) and the Russian side wasn't willing to pay that much.

As heard in the advert, Stallone Rockets also announced a contest for bands where to participate and be considered each band had to pay 5,000 Russian rubles (which was quite a lot of money back then). They also announced a "Mr. and Miss Stallone" contest with a participation fee of 10 rubles. The idea was that the winners of both contests were going to get a spot on the show and tour internationally with the show. To me both contests sound like total cash grabs. And by the looks of it both were a flop and didn't attract many participants so they quietly went away. Well, technically there was a "Mr. Stallone" selected, but he didn't amount to much.

Make no mistake about it though, despite the cash-grabby failed contests, there was solid financial backing behind this project and there was a good amount of money being invested in trying to get the show off the ground. For their training center they had rented out a building in the Trudovye Rezervy sports complex in Moscow. According to a journalist who visited the facility in late July 1991, at the time there were twelve women training there, the youngest being 17 years old. The women had been provided with a wrestling gym, a boxing gym, a weight room, a swimming pool, a sauna, a beauty salon, and a hair salon by the company. According to that same report, the women were being paid a training salary of 400 to 800 rubles a month. As far as I can tell, the average monthly salary in Moscow back then was no more than 350 rubles a month so this training salary would have been above the Moscow average. However, keep in mind that the information about the women's salaries most likely came from Sokolov himself so there's a good chance it was exaggerated. No way to know for sure.

A few of the Stallone Rockets women

The women that were part of the show had various backgrounds, that much is known. Gymnastics, acrobatics, judo, ballet, a couple of girls off the sleazy beauty contest circuit, etc. Some were married, others were single. It was a mix of all sorts of women. Unfortunately though, most of the women were not mentioned by name in the press reports back then. I can only confirm the names Irina Perunova, Alena Tverdohleb (who had achieved some success in judo in Ukraine before joining the show) and Tatyana Pikalova (who a few years later was one of the gladiators in the Australia vs. Russia "Gladiators" game show mini-series in Australia). I've also come across a claim that Svetlana Pugacheva (WFF/WBBF Overall World Bodybuilding champion in 2001) was part of the roster too, but I haven't been able to confirm that claim. A couple of the women I just mentioned were probably not part of the initial line-up and joined the show later on. 

When it came to their training, the women weren't doing just pro wrestling training. Reportedly, they were being trained in pro wrestling, boxing, hand-to-hand combat, kickboxing, Thai boxing, karate, freestyle wrestling, acrobatics, gymnastics, and acting. This definitely checks out, because as we will see below, Stallone Rockets was meant to be more than just a wrestling show. We'll talk about the product itself shortly.

Publicity photo: the women of Stallone Rockets at the Stallone Rockets training center

Speaking of the product, what you have to keep in mind is that these were times of change in the Soviet Union. After decades of socialism and strict state control, democracy and capitalism were on their way to the USSR and in showrunner Sergey Sokolov's eyes his women's wrestling show was a perfect representation of the changing times. Here's how he explained it: "Wrestling is a direct expression and reflection of the achievements and ideals of Western democracy, to which we are now turning: everyone for themselves, everyone has the right to win, and everyone can 'make themselves' the winner."

On the flip side, however, Western style pro wrestling was something very foreign to the Soviet Union and something that could be hard to see the value in from a Soviet perspective. Not to mention that this was women's pro wrestling, which was something even more difficult to accept within the concept of Soviet morality. When pushed on the perception that women's wrestling was a dirty, immoral thing here's how Sokolov defended what Stallone Rockets was all about: 

"There's a lot of dirt in the West too, but no one there or here even hinted at stripping our girls naked in the ring or forcing them to wrestle knee-deep in mud, which for some reason we associate with such shows. Yet we know that if we did that, we'd literally 'sell' them to Italy and Greece tomorrow, with minimal expense and colossal profits. And we'd never clean up our act. And no one would talk to me like a serious businessman. Wrestling is, first and foremost, the highest level of athletic and stage training. Plus, high moral standards. Jacqueline and I promote a healthy lifestyle. Young people always need role models, and their unique psychology is sometimes completely misunderstood. Oleg Gazmanov's seemingly harshly negative song 'Putana' is perceived by teenagers as an anthem of prostitution. It's the same with racketeering - both are fairly simple, though they require a certain amount of physical training, and are highly profitable. But it's dirty. We give our girls a normal, human incentive: work hard, and you'll get everything - money, fame, America. And most importantly, health. And even more importantly, don't slide into the depths of expensive cheapness. Make yourself someone's idol, but only a genuine, pure one. You know, we deliberately didn't tell those who came first about Jacqueline and the European and American tours. They worked on pure enthusiasm…"

This gets us to the big Stallone Rockets premiere. It took place on 26 October 1991 at an exhibition hall known as Pavilion 4 in Sokolniki Park in Moscow. Here's a newspaper advert for the event:

Stallone Rockets advert

The advert above says Stallone Rockets would feature: 
- "A demonstration of martial arts by the most beautiful girls of the USSR and America."
- "The best musical groups in the country, prepared by specialists from the USSR, England and the USA."
- "A unique set design, decorations, lighting and pyrotechnic effects costing $1.5 million and having no equal in the country."
- "The first show in the USSR, prepared by the best specialists of our country together with specialists from Hollywood."

And indeed, as the advert suggests, the event had a big entrance stage along with special lighting and pyrotechnics, and the show itself was a spectacle unlike anything else in the USSR up to that point. Wrestling was the core attraction and the main portion of the show, but the show also featured boxing, kickboxing, dancers, musical performances by Markiza and the Russian rock star Igor Kupriyanov, comedy, etc. All female wrestlers had their own distinct characters and unique entrances. The characters were GLOW-esque in name and style. It was a mix of foreign and Russian gimmicks - Freddy Krueger, Vampire, Fire, KGB, Perestroika, Russia, Ninja, Matryoshka, etc. They also had a couple of women that to me look to have been inspired by Bull Nakano and Sherri Martel, look-wise. There were also male supporting characters. From the very start the idea for this show was to present a Western style product with a Russian spin and take it internationally, particularly to the United States. As such, outside of the musical performances, there wasn't much, if any, Russian spoken on the show and there was an American ring announcer.

Jackie Stallone herself was in attendance for the big premiere event and praised the Russian girls in the Russian press afterward, calling them "even cooler than the American girls and just as sexy". She also had this amusing quote: "The Russians produced the first wrestling bomb, comparable in surprise and power to the first Russian atomic bomb. Even more."

The debut show was taped and you can see highlights from it below. It is possible clips of it may have aired on the aforementioned 2x2 TV channel, but I'm not aware of the whole show having aired anywhere so I don't think this footage ever made it to television in full. In the footage below there are no TV logos present and this suggests to me the footage likely comes from someone's personal collection. The footage does provide a pretty good idea of what the show was all about. Jackie Stallone can be seen in it as well.

5-minute music video with highlights from the debut Stallone Rockets show (26 October 1991):

 
Original source of the video: https://vkvideo.ru/video-56856213_456239020

There's only one other video of Stallone Rockets out there, as far as I'm aware, and it's this one below. It's of Igor Kupriyanov singing on the show. Based on the logo in the top right corner, the footage looks to have aired on Russian national TV in the mid to late 2000s, likely as part of a show about Kupriyanov. You can see a scrolling text at the bottom at one point which suggests the footage came from Kupriyanov's personal archive. This video gives us a better look at the Stallone Rockets entrance stage. At the start of it you can hear the American ring announcer.

Igor Kupriyanov performing his hit song "Ночная гостья" (Night Guest) on Stallone Rockets (26 October 1991):

 Original source of the video: https://vkvideo.ru/video-1616214_456239109

Sidenote: The official music video for the song above was actually filmed on the Stallone Rockets stage. The video was then featured on the extremely popular MuzOboz music TV show on Programme One (the most-watched television channel in the Soviet Union).

After the debut Stallone Rockets event things went quiet for a few months, although I believe the women were still training at the training facility. I've come across a claim that they were even doing live events around Moscow, but that's an unverified claim that came many years later.

Stallone Rockets' next big announcement was in mid February 1992 when they publicized a new 3-day round of auditions for the show. This time they announced that they were looking specifically for girls, aged 16 to 25, with a height of at least 170 cm (5'7"). They were also looking for dancers, preferably with experience in funk rock, American jazz and rap. Within a few weeks of the new casting call, the number of performers (male and female) on the show had grown to 39, reportedly. And the group was supposedly gearing up for big things.

Some of the Stallone Rockets cast posing at the Stallone Rockets training center

The first thing they had in the works was a television special called "Pop stars visit Stallone Rockets". It was filmed at some point in March 1992 at the 13,700-capacity Luzhniki Palace of Sports in Moscow and it's exactly what it sounds like - the Stallone Rockets show featuring various Russian pop music stars, some of whom were quite popular back then. The taping featured the likes of Mikhail Muromov, Dima Malikov, Zhenya Belousov and Alexei Glyzin as well as the bands Markiza, Kar-Men, Krug, and the music composer Vladimir Matetsky. Regrettably, I couldn't find more information about this particular event and whether it aired on television or not. Based on the caliber of names involved, it's definitely a possibility that this TV special was planned for national television, not for the smaller 2x2 channel.

In early May 1992 the talk was that Stallone Rockets was getting ready for a new "season" and they were making some changes to the product. There was even a press conference where they talked about their future plans. They wanted to make the show more theatrical and musical while also adding elements from Russian folklore and history. They were now also going to do simulated fights while wearing chain-mail and using clubs/sabres/axes/samurai swords/arrows/etc. They were also going to introduce Slavic-Goritsky wrestling bouts (a Russian martial art developed in the 1980s). Musically, the show was going to be moving into more of a pop direction as opposed to rock as it was at the start. Plus, in addition to the popular singers and bands that they would have performing between the matches, the band Markiza were going to create custom entrance music for the wrestlers.

Why they were recruiting new women and making all the changes to the show was because, reportedly, they were preparing for a tour of the United States. At least such were the reports in the Russian press. Whether that was really the case, I don't know. The talk in the Russian press was that Jackie Stallone was pushing for this tour to happen. Las Vegas was mentioned as the likely destination. Around this time there was once again talk that Jackie was going to send a group of eight American women to Moscow to train for three months with the Russian women in preparation for the American tour.

A tour of the United States had been one of the primary goals for Stallone Rockets since the start of the project and they were saying they were now on the verge of it, finally. However, what happened is that in mid June 1992 the sponsor of the show, Unona Laser, publicly terminated its sponsorship of the show, citing personal financial difficulty as the reason. That 2017 Russian book about Sergey Sokolov that I mentioned earlier claimed that there was a dispute between the Russian side and the American side about how to split the revenue from the American tour (the Russian side wanted a 80/20 split in its favor), and when they couldn't get what they wanted Unona Laser pulled out of the project. I don't know if that claim is true (and I'm leaning toward no), but either way with Unona Laser out of the picture Stallone Rockets was left without funding. It was announced in the press that Stallone Rockets was seeking 5 million rubles in funding for their American tour (which would've been akin to something like $250,000-$300,000 back then). After the disbanding of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, 1992 was a tough economic year in Russia and there was very high inflation so securing new funding was going to be very challenging no matter what. Ultimately, Stallone Rockets wasn't able to find new funding, there were no further shows, there was no U.S. tour, and within a few months Stallone Rockets was officially done.

All in all, Stallone Rockets was a pretty unique project for that time in Russia. There really was nothing else quite like it in that part of Europe back then. It was a clear example of the changing times in Russia. Just a few years prior something like Stallone Rockets would've never been allowed to even exist. Sokolov and partners clearly had some money and interesting ideas, but at the end of the day they couldn't make things work long-term, neither in the Russian market, nor in terms of their international touring ambitions.

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We cannot wrap up this article without mentioning what Sergey Sokolov, the creator of Stallone Rockets, ended up becoming later in life. I'll spare you some of the details, because I want to keep this brief, but just know that if one digs in deep there's a lot of different stories and allegations related to him that one can come across. Anyway, at some point in the mid 1990s Sokolov became one of the founders and the director of a private security company called Atoll-1, which was a lot more than just your ordinary private security firm. Atoll-1 was tasked with protecting the business interests of Boris Berezovsky (one of the richest and most powerful Russian oligarchs of the 1990s). At that time, among other things, Berezovsky and partners co-owned the biggest Russian television network ORT (the other half was state-owned) and yielded a lot of influence. Berezovsky was a major supporter of the then Russian president Boris Yeltsin and later he was one of Vladimir Putin's main backers in Putin's rise to power. Not too long after, however, Putin and Berezovsky had a big falling out which ultimately led to Berezovsky fleeing Russia in 2000 and becoming a fervent critic of Putin. In the second half of the 1990s Sokolov's Atoll-1 was allegedly involved in corporate and political espionage, illegal surveillance and wiretapping, collection of compromising material for extortion purposes, planting false evidence, etc. You get the picture. Anything and everything to protect Berezovsky's business interests. After 2000 Sokolov was no longer part of the Berezovsky circle and he positioned himself as an expert on security, terrorism and criminal networks. In 2017 a Ukrainian publication alleged that Sokolov had run a failed false-flag operation that was meant to bring Ukrainian ATO veterans to Russia as construction workers and then plant evidence to paint them as terrorists. Naturally, Sokolov denied this. The following year he ended up being arrested by the FSB (the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) and two years later he was sentenced to prison for 3 years and 9 months. The charges were illegal weapons trafficking and schemes involving the creation of clandestine weapons caches and the staging or simulation of terrorist activity. So, as you can see, his life after Stallone Rockets took a drastic turn...

Sergey Sokolov in 2026

P.S. When talking about women's wrestling in the Soviet Union in the early 1990s we also have to acknowledge that there was another women's group in the USSR in 1991. It was a touring women's wrestling show based out of Kyiv and it was called Red Girls. There's not a whole lot of information about it. It seems to have been billed as a sports and erotic show. I've only found a couple of reports so it's hard to tell what sort of show it was exactly. One live event report mentioned that the show started with a big brawl between some of the women and they had to be separated by "police", and it ended with a match where one of the women dunked the other one in a container of water. There was also a singer and a dance group, presumably performing between the matches. I don't know if that was the case elsewhere too, but in the two cities that I have reports for they ran good-sized buildings - they had a show at the 10,800-seat Palace of Sports in Kyiv (Ukraine) and three shows at the 4,200-seat Linnahall in Tallinn (Estonia). That said, according to a report from the local press in Tallinn, there wasn't much interest in the shows. The report described the arena for one of the events as being barely 1/4 full, despite there being a good amount of advertising for the shows. It also said people started leaving the show right after the first match. All in all, it doesn't seem like Red Girls was around for long. Perhaps a year, if that.

Photo from a Red Girls show in Tallinn.