Penny Banner - Professional Wrestling Career

Professional Wrestling Career

Kostecki began her career in wrestling as a way to learn how to defend herself outside of the ring. She came up with the name "Penny Banner" because she admired Charlton Heston, who used the surname Banner in a movie, and the first name Penny was also significant to her.

She held many titles in her career, including the NWA Women's World Tag Team Championship three times between 1956 and 1960 and the AWA World Women's Champion in 1961. In 1959, a match with NWA Champion June Byers, which ended in a draw, although Byers had consistently beat her in matches for three years prior. She was then booked into a match with Byers in Indiana for the newly formed American Wrestling Alliance (AWA) in August 1961, but Byers no-showed. Instead of their scheduled match, the AWA booked a battle royal, which Banner won to become the first AWA Women's Champion. She vacated the title when she moved to North Carolina with her husband and child.

During her career, Banner had her nosed ripped up and her elbow dislocated. Banner claimed that she retired in 1977 after June Byers, who owned the NWA Women's Championship, retired because of a car accident, and that Moolah had corned much of the national women's wrestling scene with her trainees and herself, which left Banner with nobody to wrestle in the Carolinas. In her last twenty years of wrestling, Banner was only defeated twice: once by Moolah and once by Belle Start, both of whom used the ropes for leverage while pinning Banner.