3. Paige
It's been claimed that Paige (Saraya-Jade Bevis, the daughter of English pro wrestling veterans Ricky Knight and Sweet Saraya) took her first bump as a foetus, while her fearsome mother was seven months pregnant with her. While I'm not sure it's possible to develop pre-natal PTSD, as a child Bevis was scared of wrestling. She'd seen the wear and tear that her family went through - it wasn't for her. That all changed when she was thirteen years old. She'd been messing around in the ring with her brothers learning the ropes in a half-assed fashion for a couple of years, her father having begun running a wrestling school. Then a participant didn't show up for a multi-woman match on a local card, and Knight asked whether his young daughter would mind filling in, to make up the numbers. That was all it took: little Saraya-Jade got the bug. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7mNDV_bX44 Bevis travelled all over Europe wrestling as a teenager under the name Britani Knight, getting paid peanuts to set up the ring, flyer the show and then wrestle. It was an incredible education that would stand her in good stead when WWE tryouts came to England in 2010, and on her second attempt in April 2011, Bevis was successful. Despite being the only woman there, she impressed trainers Dustin 'Goldust' Runnels and Jamie Noble as she wrestled the guys for almost the entire two hour camp. She was offered a contract then and there, and flew to begin training in WWE for Florida Championship Wrestling on New Year's Eve 2011. She was only just nineteen years old, but had been wrestling for six years. It was Paiges matches with Emma in NXT that persuaded Triple H and others to increase the profile of womens wrestling on the developmental brand, and it was that increased profile that saw the so-called Divas Revolution take place on WWEs main roster in 2015. The ripples from that are still spreading, but its possible that the former Britani Knight may be one of the most important wrestlers to hit WWE for years.
Jack Morrell
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Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
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