08/17/2026
I’ve been thinking a lot about how excited I am to have more women coming onto Smoke & Meteoras, and I think part of that excitement goes all the way back to why I fell in love with wrestling in the first place.
I got into wrestling as a little girl over 20 years ago.
And wrestling looked VERY different for women back then.
There was a time when a Bra & Panties Match could be one of the biggest opportunities women were given on wrestling television. I watched women fight to be taken seriously in a business that overwhelmingly centered men, and over the course of my life as a wrestling fan, I’ve literally had the privilege of watching that change in front of me.
I watched women go from fighting for minutes…
to fighting for championships.
From being treated like an attraction…
to main events.
And when I eventually discovered independent wrestling, I found an entirely different world of women carving out spaces for themselves, pushing boundaries and showing me just how much bigger professional wrestling could be.
I’ve watched that evolution happen for more than two decades.
And it mattered to me.
I’m a bisexual white woman. There are plenty of experiences in wrestling that aren’t mine and stories I’ll never personally understand.
But growing up as a girl watching women find their place in such a male-dominated world gave me a sense of representation that I didn’t fully understand at the time.
I saw someone like me belonging somewhere I loved.
And I think that’s part of why I’ve remained so ridiculously passionate about professional wrestling all these years later.
It’s also a huge part of why I created Smoke & Meteoras.
This show was never supposed to be a platform for one type of wrestler.
I don’t care about your gender.
I don’t care about your sexuality.
I don’t care if you’ve wrestled for twenty years or twenty months.
I don’t care if thousands of people know your name or if twenty people watched you wrestle last weekend.
If you have a story, I want to hear it.
Because you never know who needs to hear YOUR story.
Maybe someone hears about the moment you almost gave up and decides to keep going.
Maybe someone recognizes themselves in the person you are outside the ring.
Maybe a shy fan discovers that you love the same band, movie, game or weird little fandom they do and suddenly feels comfortable enough to come say hello at your merch table.
Or maybe some little girl discovers someone who makes her think:
“There’s a place here for me too.”
That’s what representation did for me.
And THAT is what I want Smoke & Meteoras to feel like.
The men who have trusted me with their stories on this show mean every bit as much to me, and there are so many more of those conversations I want to have.
But I’m incredibly excited to hear more women’s stories.
And LGBTQ+ stories.
And stories from different cultures, backgrounds, identities, wrestling styles and corners of this crazy business.
Not because I’m trying to check boxes.
Because professional wrestling is bigger and more interesting when everyone gets to tell their story.
Twenty-plus years ago, I was just a little girl watching wrestling and finding pieces of myself in the women who refused to leave.
Today, I get to hand wrestlers a microphone and ask:
“Who are you, really?”
And maybe somewhere out there, somebody listening finds a little piece of themselves in the answer.
