A former WWE ring girl wants to chokeslam longtime Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal — at the polls.
Themis Klarides, now a 57-year-old attorney, has served as a representative in the Connecticut legislature for 20 years and was the first woman leader of the state’s Republican lawmakers.
But before all that, Klarides was on a very different career path.
“Themis Klarides … she’s a real talented girl. She’s 27 years old and she hails from Seymour, Connecticut. She stands five foot seven inches tall weighs a 130 pounds and isn’t she lovely,” said Todd Pettengill, who worked as a backstage interviewer for World Wrestling Entertainment (then known as WWF) at the time. The grainy 1993 video was uploaded to YouTube last year.
“She’s a graduate of the Bridgeport school of law — this girl’s an attorney!” Pettengill continued as a bikini-clad Klarides strutted around holding promotional signs. “She’s working now at an insurance company. She’s in the process of completing her masters degree in economics. Themis was a finalist in last year’s Miss Fitness USA and has plans to compete in other fitness contests this summer.”
WWF Raw — one of the genre’s most popular recurring programs — debuted in 1993 and Klarides was one of several ring girls hired to hold signs promoting the show and ginning up the audience. She was romantically linked to pro-wrestler Shawn Michaels.
“There were quite a few women and a couple of men that were just sort of showcased on Raw. It was a self-promotion. They would try out and if they were selected they would appear on raw for an episode as the ring girl or ring guy,” Pettengill The Post in a phone interview.
Reps for Klarides said it was a part time gig to help pay law school bills and she could not recall how much she was paid. She never wrestled.
Klarides declined to comment to The Post, but spoke about her experience during a 2018 appearance on the podcast “In The Arena” — saying it was often bizarre balancing the wrestling job with her professional aspirations.
“I thought it was kind of fun and I talked to some of my friends and I did it, and it went so well that they decided they wanted to hire other girls to do it and I would kind of be in charge of the new girls,” she recalled.
“I would be in the back with all the wrestlers and the other girls in our swimsuits and all their wrestling gear and I would have all my bar review books out studying for the bar. So I was the odd man out there.”
Klarides, a moderate, is considered a favorite to win the state’s GOP primary on Aug. 9. She’s raised just under $500,000 this year and has secured the backing of the state party. Knocking out Blumenthal will be another matter in deep blue Connecticut, where the incumbent Democrat won his last race with 63% of the vote. Blumenthal has more than $8 million in the bank, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Klarides married energy executive Gregory Brian Butler in 2020, with their romance earning a New York Times weddings write-up.
