by Carrie Dunn
Unsurprisingly, her inspirations have all been from the big US promotions.
“My inspiration at first was Lita, then as I got older it was Molly Holly, Trish Stratus, Victoria and Mickie James,” she says. “When I started wrestling I watched tapes and watched more of a variety and really was inspired, and still am, by Sara Del Rey, Jetta and Rebecca Knox. I adore Natalya and Beth Phoenix too.”
That doesn’t mean she has always been impressed with the way the big US promotions have treated their top female talent: “The minute and a half matches, the lack of storyline or build-ups to matches really don’t help the matter. Neither does farting [a gimmick given to Natalya, aka Natalie Neidhart, part of the famous Hart Foundation] or barking like dogs angles [given to Trish Stratus, now in the WWE Hall of Fame]. The bra and panties matches, even though they are a thing of the past, have also had an impact, I feel, with the way people perceive women’s wrestling,” she says, adding: “Even though Nikki Storm is a sexy beast, no amount of money in the world would make her agree to a match like that.”
It is not surprising then that in the spring of 2012, Storm launched a scathing attack on the wrestling industry’s ingrained sexism via an article on the Ringbelles website, criticising men who refused to treat her as an equal in an attempt to protect their “boys’ club”, adding: “My biggest issue is the disrespect that I get from fans, workers, bookers and promoters who dislike women’s wrestling. Doesn’t matter how good you are – if you’re a girl, you will never be high on the pecking order.”
Storm has been on the UK scene for a few years and has built up a scarily large collection of shocking stories.
“I remember speaking to a promoter a few years ago, and he actually said he would never pay a girl more than 20 quid; even if the girl had been in the business for years, he said he would never pay her more than £20. It was not the figure that bothered me the most, it was the way the d***head had emphasised ‘a girl’. Needless to say, I never have and never will work for that guy.”
She has another example where a promoter has made explicitly sexual comments to her, making her feel “hurt and betrayed”; now she admits: “Looking back I think it was a joke – but would he have said that to a guy?”
It is not just the so-called banter she and other women have to deal with backstage – it also has an impact on the way female wrestlers are used on shows.
“A few promoters have asked me and the girl I’m on with to not do any strikes as ‘they look weak when a girl does them’,” she says. “I have responded each time by going out there and hitting fantastic strikes. Clearly these men have never seen Nikki Storm in action. After the match, the promoters were very complimentary about the strikes and the match itself so that makes me feel great – that I have managed to change their opinions slightly about women’s wrestling.”
It is tough to change attitudes, though, and tough to judge when and how to speak up and challenge people, admits Storm. “It’s hard to deal with this because a huge part of you wants to throw a hissy fit and have a good rant and perhaps go all honey badger on their arse. Then another part is like be professional, it’s a job, just do your match, get your money and then get out of there. I mean, there are drawbacks to every job, right?”
She pauses. “Yeah, I know, it’s not a convincing argument, I have failed to convince myself on that as well. Another part of you doesn’t want to speak up in case you lose future work. It is very difficult as you have so many conflicting opinions about it. In the past I have just got on with it and ignored it but in the past year I think I am a much more confident and secure person than I was when I started wrestling in 2008. If I lose work over it, then so be it.”
Storm isn’t deceiving herself, though – she’s not going to be able to fix everything by herself, and this isn’t a problem confined to wrestling.
“I think that it’s something that will not happen overnight and it may take decades to overcome. The double standard is so prevalent in society, not just wrestling. In the Middle Ages women were burned at the stake and accused of being witches if they were a bit different – I mean, we have moved on from that, so hopefully we will live in a world where there is no sexism: wishful thinking, perhaps, but attitudes can change given time, and hopefully it doesn’t take, like, 500 years. I think that when guys start speaking about the issue of sexism in wrestling it will make a difference. When more girls start speaking about their opinions and experiences it will also have an impact.”
In the meantime, Storm will continue to prove herself in the ring – in 2012, she was one half of the first women’s ladder match competed in the UK at Clash of the Titans, beating Sara to retain the W3L Women’s Championship.
“We were given so much freedom,” she enthuses. “We were told a time, who was going over and general direction they wanted. We definitely went for telling a great dramatic story as opposed to an insane TLC [tables, ladders, chairs] crazy spot-fest. The end result was a brilliant match – and one of the biggest reasons was the fact that me and Sara wanted to tell a certain story and the promoters trusted us and gave us freedom to tell our story.
“At the same time, I had a good match a couple of months back and the promoter had given us the finishing sequence move for move. It turned out pretty well and I was grateful for their input but at the same time I would not want that every single time I wrestled. As annoying as it can be, you have to make mistakes to learn and if someone is telling you what to do move for move, it makes it more difficult to learn.
“It’s so frustrating when a promoter wants you to do something and you know it doesn’t make sense. The way you react varies depending on the situation. Once, a promoter asked me to take a move off the top rope – I can’t remember which one it was but it involved me pretty much coming directly on to my head. I was, like, no and that was the end of it.
“There have been a couple of times when they wanted the structure of the match a certain way and unless it’s really, really bad or dangerous I’ll go with what the promoter wants generally, as they are the ones paying you. At the same time I’ll offer suggestions if I feel something doesn’t make sense and make a few tweaks here and there with the promoter’s permission. I suppose if we talk ratios I would say 40 per cent should come from the promoter and 60 per cent from the two workers.
“Then if the two workers want to tell two different stories, it’s about communication and compromise. It’s irritating when the other worker just wants to do a lot of spots and only cares about the moves they do. In a good wrestling match, the moves are not important. I feel what’s important is the story being told and the personalities of the two wrestlers. That’s my opinion and I know not everyone agrees.”
Storm’s opinion is clearly based on her own experience as a fan, when she admired the wrestlers who were best at telling a story and portraying a character; and her own in-ring personality is straightforward. “I take wrestling really seriously but I still like to have fun and I think that shows in my wrestling. I am pretty quick-tempered as well which shows in my aggression and my strikes. My character is my worst points turned all the way up – aggressive, mouthy, irritating, bad-tempered, annoying and extremely self-centred.”
Scratch just a little deeper and one finds out that Storm isn’t the angry heel she seems to be – even if she is not all that keen on the other people she encounters. “I’ve been thinking about getting into veterinary nursing – I prefer animals to people so it makes sense. Animal cruelty and the welfare of animals is so crucial and I feel pretty passionate about it. If I can contribute to helping an animal that would be my dream job.”
Not everyone can adopt the gimmick that makes Hannah and Holly Blossom stand out – being identical twins – but they have made the most of it, beating the rest of the UK talent to secure a slot in 2013’s TNA British Boot Camp. Identical twins may be a trope all too familiar in some rather dubious fantasy material, but make no mistake, these women are dedicated wrestlers – they’re not there as
pin-ups. They are a staple part of Pro Wrestling EVE, where they often feature as a tag team, but both have also worked at OVW, the US promotion that has previously acted as a WWE feeder territory and is now a TNA training school, where they have both won the championship belt.
The girls were initially inspired by watching American wrestling with their brother. “We watched it on TV one Saturday with our brother and never stopped,” says Holly. “We loved it and decided that’s what we wanted to do.”
“It quickly became our whole world,” agrees Hannah. “We grew up wanting to be a tag team like the Hardy Boyz and the Rockers. Now we are still influenced by the likes of Shawn Michaels and women like Mickie James and Trish Stratus but also we are often inspired by those around us and the people we train with.”
Holly has great memories of their initial training. “I remember that we started at a very good time with a lovely group of guys who took us under their wings; we loved training every week and really embraced everything.”
It has set them both on the road to great things. “Becoming OVW Women’s Champion and a part of the OVW roster hands down has been my greatest achievement so far,” says Holly. “The experiences and opportunities we have had by being there have just been incredible. We have loved every minute and learnt so much from some of the best people like Mike Mondo, Al Snow and Rip Rogers.”
Holly is a bit less forthcoming than Storm about facing sexism in wrestling. “Being girls we definitely understand where Nikki is coming from and have had guys treat us certain ways in the past,” she admits, “but at the same time we have been very lucky to come up through the business with a great group of people and a lot of our best friends are guys in the business who know we love it just as much as they do and treat us the same as they would anyone else, so we prefer to focus on that and the positives.”
Hannah is rather more outspoken. “We have been around the rude guys and the guys that don’t shake your hand because they don’t think you’re a wrestler or they think you’re after something,” she says. “It was quite disheartening eight years ago when we first got into wrestling but as we’ve grown up we tend to focus on the positives and stay away from those people. We got into wrestling because we absolutely, wholeheartedly love wrestling; we train with guys and go through the same stuff that they go through and I guess we are lucky that some of our best friends are the boys we work with.”
Rhia O’Reilly began her wrestling career at the age of 15 as the only girl in a training camp full of boys.
“It was the most terrifying experience of my life,” she recalls. “I flew away from home [in Northern Ireland] by myself for the first time, then I got the train down to Portsmouth, and I was the only girl. I think there was 30 of us – 29 guys and me. I went to an all-girls school. So I got here, and I was like ‘this is terrifying, there are no girls, boys are stupid’, but I ended up loving it.
“I’d have to go into the toilet and lock the door to get changed because I didn’t want to get changed with the boys. I felt quite nervous because most of them had been there before, and they were like: ‘Ugh, it’s a girl!’ I’m sure they’d had girls come and go, but they never came back. The first time I went over there, they were like: ‘She’s going to be here once.’ At night I’d go to sleep in this room with all these guys, and just lie there, feeling really self-conscious as well, especially when you’re a teenager. But it was all right. I survived it.”
Rhia still claims that at that point of her career she was “terrible, absolutely rubbish”, which explains why her wrestling went by the wayside a little when she went to university. Then she picked it up again, quit her job, and headed off to one of the best and most famous training schools in the world – Lance Storm’s Academy in Canada.
“I needed to train every day because I couldn’t even bump. Every day, everyone would do their little bump drill, and I’d be sitting there going: ‘Ugh, it doesn’t work.’ I ended up being the best bumper by the end, because it just ended up being drilled in my head.
“It was odd going into work one day and handing in my notice – ‘I’ve had a really good time working here, it’s been great for the last four years, but I’m going to Canada to train to be a wrestler’,” she laughs. “I just told everyone exactly what I was doing and they all thought I was mental. I literally just packed up my stuff and went.”
She flew out to Canada, where Storm himself met her at the airport, and then moved into a house with the other trainees for three months. “It was super fun, the best months – got up every morning, went to training, wrestling training, in the afternoon we all headed to the gym, then we’d all come home and have dinner together, watch wrestling. At the weekends we’d go out; there was a local promotion that we’d go and watch once a month. It was the best time ever, I learnt so much there.”
Storm led the training himself – primarily the in-ring work, but also with some attention to character. “Mostly it was physical training, but we would do promo days: we would do different characters, when we were doing our matches we would try to bring some character into them, try and be different people. He did everything with us. We had a day where we sat down after we’d done our training session and had the drug talk. He taught us how to make a blade if we should ever require it – I mean, he wasn’t doing it in front of us but he said ‘this is how you make it’.”
He also used his experience to offer character advice and suggestions to his students.
“I had fluorescent pink hair then, and Lance is constantly buzzing with wrestling, whether he knows it or not, he’s always going, and he came in one day and said: ‘Rhia, I’ve had this idea for a character for you, blow big bubblegums, you come to the ring, you stick your gum on the ringpost, do your match, take it off afterwards.’ I was like: ‘It’s gross, but it’s kind of cool.’
“So I was so up for this, I was like ‘this is going to be my character’, then of course I came back to the UK and found out there’s a guy who wrestles as Bubblegum. I was totally gutted. I was so set for this, I’d been figuring out what my gear would look like and everything, because I was like, ‘Lance Storm had this idea and it’s going to be cool! It’s awesome! It’s going to be really good!’ and then I was devastated.”
O’Reilly confesses she can understand to a point the mentality that says that women shouldn’t wrestle. “It’s a bit polarised. Of course there are some people that say that people don’t want to see women wrestle. It’s not just wrestling, it’s MMA [that it happens in as well] – people don’t want to see girls hit girls. That’s the mentality. It’s not necessarily wrestling.
“Yes, in a sense, I disagree with it. On the same tangent, I would never want to be involved in a match where I was going to bleed. I don’t think people want to see women bleed. That’s my sense of it. I don’t think people mind women being violent, but I don’t think people want to see women with their faces covered in blood.”
O’Reilly believes there has been progress in the UK wrestling industry in recent years, with women getting the opportunity to wrestle more and be seen as participants, not just decorative. That’s not to say everything is perfect now.
“One of the girls I worked with before, she did the camps and stuff, she got treated like crap because she wouldn’t sleep with any of the guys. She had a boyfriend at home, but that’s neither here nor there to them. A lot of guys on the road – not all of them by a long stretch, there are a lot of guys that are faithful and loyal and whatever – but there are some that are wanting to get their end away, they’re in the same place every week, they’ve got girls in every town, which is ridiculous to me, because they’re just these guys wrestling these little shows, but they’re appealing to some girls.
“I think the locker rooms are a lot better than they used to be. I remember hearing stories, and I think for some of the guys it must have been pretty horrendous, the young guys coming into the old scene, because I remember hearing about guys going into a locker room and all the guys had h
alf-naked women around them.
“There was pressure for them to sleep with girls as well, not wrestlers, not female wrestlers, but rats [ring rats – wrestling groupies] and stuff like that, and that was the only reason women were meant to be there. That old-school mentality – you can tell some wrestlers have been trained by the older wrestlers, and they still think that, even if it’s not how they act, they still think it should be that way. I’ve been very lucky, but I don’t take crap from anybody.
“A lot of promoters will still see women as an easy lay – we’ll book you if you sleep with us, that kind of thing – and I know that still happens in some promotions in the UK, and that is still an issue. Then there is an issue that girls get in to wrestling just to get with the guys, and people like that still exist as well. I’m like: ‘If you want to go after wrestlers, fine, but don’t be a wrestler yourself, that just tarnishes everybody else.’”
She thinks all-female promotions are a good thing, giving women a showcase for their talents, but dislikes the attitude that adds a women’s match as a ‘break’ from the real action or some kind of titillation.
“I’ve wrestled for promotions that have women’s matches as part of their show, it’s just another everyday part of the show and that’s fine, they seem popular. But they are constantly seen as some kind of special attraction match, as it were, so I guess it is still kind of separate. The influx of the women’s promotions, I think, has been really good, in that it does give us a mantle for ourselves to be like: ‘Well, look, we can put on a really good show without any guys on it.’
“Some people won’t even give it a shot, so in some ways it does isolate women’s wrestling, because it’s a whole show of women, [and the fans will say,] ‘I don’t want to see it because women can’t wrestle’. On the other hand, some may go, see eight matches with women in it, and maybe they’re more keen to see them on other shows as well, so I think it’s a catch-22.”
