To Jackie:
Thank you for always being there for me through thick and thin. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.
Love, Bobby
Back in the fall of 2016, former two-time NWA World Junior Heavyweight champion Ron Starr and I had just completed the manuscript for his autobiography Bad To The Bone: 25 Years of Riots and Wrestling.
I asked Ron – who was born Bobby Nutt – how we wanted to dedicate the book, and he spoke the above words as his dedication to his wife of more than 20 years.
Ron passed away the following year, and on November 9, 2024, at the age of 64, Jacquelynn Martin Nutt passed away in Opp, Alabama after dealing with COPD and stage four kidney disease. “She is with Daddy now,” said Ron’s daughter, Nicole Miller.
In truth, Ron’s dedication couldn’t have been more perfect. Jackie, who grew up in the tiny town of Florala, Alabama, was a lifelong fan of pro wrestling when Ron spotted her at a 1983 spot show in Defuniak Springs, Florida, presented by Ron Fuller’s Southeastern Championship Wrestling. The show was held at a high school gym, and the baby faces had their locker room on one side of the gym, and the heels used the locker room on the other side.
“The fans could sit wherever they wanted,” Ron recalled. “But the ones who liked the heels usually sat by their locker room.”
When Ron saw the cute little blonde lady sitting near the babyfaces’ locker room, Ron, who at the time was part of the Midnight Express heel faction, approached her and said, “Hey Darlin’, you need to go from where you’re sittin’ and go and sit on this end,” gesturing toward the section near the heel’s dressing room. Ron then led her to the heels’ section before going back into the dressing room to prepare for his match.
Ron worked his match that night and afterward, he and Jackie got to talking, and as she would later say, “We’ve been talking ever since.”
Ron and Jackie dated for a couple of years before he finally broke kayfabe, letting her in on the secrets of the pro wrestling business, although Jackie always insisted that she always knew that pro wrestling was a work.
The couple did separate for a time when Ron went up to work in Calgary for Stu Hart, but they reconnected when he returned to the south of the United States. When Ron left for his first run for Nova Scotia wrestling promoter Emile Dupre in the summer of 1985, Ron asked Jackie to go with him.
“I liked that she was never real boisterous or one to raise hell,” Ron said. “There was also that certain something about her. Everything just clicked between us.”
Jackie agreed to go with Ron to Canada, and as Ron said, “We’ve been traveling through life together ever since, so I guess she was the right one.”
It was during their time in Puerto Rico that Jackie first joined Ron not just on the road, but at ringside. The booking office, taking notice of Jackie’s attractiveness, suggested Ron use her as a valet for his “Rambo” Ron Starr character, a heel persona based on the Sylvester Stallone character and Ron’s own real-life experiences as a Vietnam veteran. Jackie decided on the name of “Miss Peaches” for wrestling character.
Miss Peaches debuted on September 19, 1986, in Ponce, Puerto Rico, during a match between Ron and Jose Gonzalez for the WWC TV Championship. During the match, Jackie came out to ringside in an evening gown and struck Jose with a steel chair. Gonzalez did a blade job, and with blood pouring from his head, was pinned by Ron.
The fans went crazy, and security rushed to escort Jackie back to the dressing room, but one male fan managed to reach out from the audience and grab Jackie by the hair, spinning her around, and then punching her in the nose.
Security grabbed the fan and took him to the back, where they gave him a beating. They then asked Jackie if she would like to hit him.
Jackie replied, “No, that’s okay. He didn’t really hurt me. Besides, you guys are doing a pretty good job on your own.”
“They wanted her to rain down on the guy, but she turned down their offer, saying she hardly even felt the punch,” Ron recalled. “She just went along her business. She was and is a tough little lady, and she had to be to get through some of the stuff we went through down there.”
Some of that “stuff”, included projectiles thrown by the raucous Puerto Rican wrestling fans, which included batteries, cups of ice, and a knife that narrowly missed her, as well as riots that Ron and his tag team partner Chicky Starr would incite. But whether it was in Puerto Rico – where Ron and Jackie married – or the Canadian Maritimes, Miss Peaches was always by Ron’s side.
That partnership – and Jackie’s toughness – continued long after Ron’s ring career ended in 1997. Before the end of that decade, Ron suffered the first of several strokes he would have during the remainder of his life. That first one was the most difficult, not only physically, but mentally, as Ron had to relearn how to feed and shave himself and brush his teeth without any help. It was a process, and Jackie was there for Ron during his rehabilitation, not as his valet, but as his coach and motivator. “She was in charge of my rehab,” Ron recalled. “It was tough love, but it was love.”
The ensuing years included several health scares for Ron, and the passing of both Jackie’s young adult son, Brad, and her mother, Patsy, within a three-week period in 2008. Through it all, Jackie’s spirit and love remained strong, proving that she was every bit as bad to the bone as Ron was.
“She really loved Ron, and he really loved her,” reflected Richie Acevedo, who recently retired from the wrestling ring, and like his father, a close friend of Ron’s, wrestled as the Cuban Assassin.
Richie remembered staying with her and Ron one night when he was a young man, and Jackie cooking for him and his father. “Most of my memories of her is how close she and Ron were. She was more of a ‘Tom Boy’ type of girl, but she played ‘Peaches’ very well. She was a one-of-a-kind person.”
The funeral for Jacquelynn Martin Nutt was on November 11, 2024, and she is interred at North Creek Cemetery in Florala, Alabama.
She was preceded in death by husband, Bobby Nutt; son, Brad Strickland; father, Benjamin Jackson Martin; mother, Patsy Canull Martin; brother, Skip Martin. She is survived by sister, Mollie Ellisor (Danny), brothers, Kevin Martin (Kay) and Robbie Martin (Lee), granddaughter, Haylee Strickland and great granddaughter, Ivy Kate Norwalk. Jackie is also survived by numerous aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, great nieces and great nephews.
