It’s January 9th, and that means Ruby Riott, Smackdown Superstar and leader of the Riott Squad, turns 27 today. If you never encountered her before her arrival on WWE’s blue brand, you may have wondered what the big deal is about Ruby, and why so many of us were excited to see her there (even if we were concerned that her storyline looked an awful lot like Paige’s). So given that Tuesday is her birthday, it seems like a great time to look back on Ruby’s career, and the path that brought her to WWE.
She spent less than a year in NXT, making her TV debut in March 2017, when she appeared to help out Roderick Strong, Tye Dillinger and No Way Jose against SAnitY by taking out Nikki Cross. It was a great way to introduce her to NXT audiences, because like Nikki she’s a creature of chaos, but she’s more human, more controlled, and more of a natural babyface.
After a pretty great 8-person tag match at NXT TakeOver Orlando and a brutal feud with Nikki, her next storyline had her up against Peyton Royce and Billie Kay, who never forgave her for accidentally wandering into the background of their attempt at a makeup tutorial video.
Make fun of it if you want, but this is the sort of thing I want to see from women’s wrestling in the modern era. It’s about young women doing things that young women actually do, and it’s about how the Iconic Duo being so obsessed with themselves and each other that they can’t handle someone being totally different from them. It’s never about how Peyton and Billie are traditionally feminine and Ruby isn’t, and that makes one better than the other. It’s just about how they have different approaches to style, and also that Peyton and Billie are bullies.
And of course, that led to Nikki Cross showing up to help Ruby against the Iconic Duo, which I already discussed in my list of the best women’s matches of 2017. That’s all the big stuff Ruby really had time to do before she was called up to Smackdown in November, but to really understand Ruby, you have to go back farther than NXT.
Before she became Ruby Riot, Michigan-born Dori Prange wrestled under the name Heidi Lovelace, and she was one of the top women in the US indie wrestling scene, alongside Candice LeRae and Kimber Lee. She debuted in Shine Wrestling, OVW, and Shimmer Women Athletes in 2012. By coincidence, her Shimmer debut was the same day as the last appearance of Davina Rose, who would soon become Bayley. In the years that followed, Heidi would also wrestle at Beyond Wrestling, Chikara, AAW, Fest Wrestling, and even more promotions.
Her time at Chikara gave her the opportunity to take part in in-depth storylines, often involving her close friend Kimber Lee (who’s also at NXT now, under the name Abbey Laith). In 2015, there was a promotion-wide tournament between teams of four, and Heidi joined up with beloved Chikara babyface Dasher Hatfield, his morally dubious protege Mr. Touchdown, and former Chikara Grand Champion Icarus. When Touchdown was caught cheating on behalf of the group, Dasher forfeited the tournament. That enabled Kimber Lee’s underdog team to win, giving Kimber a shot at the Grand Championship, which she won. When Heidi had the chance a few months later to challenge her for the title, she gave one of the great emotional promos of all time:
The match is great too, but it’s not on YouTube, so you might need Chikaratopia for that. Heidi and Kimber also fought at Beyond Wrestling, F1rst Wrestling, AAW, and even the retro-styled Olde Wrestling, where Kimber is a flapper and Heidi is “Heidi the Riveter,” a muscle-flexing Rosie lookalike. Much like Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens, it would be amazing to see these two old friends meet again for a storyline on the WWE main roster, once Abbey Laith eventually makes it there.
As indie superstars go, Heidi Lovelace isn’t one I particularly expected to see in WWE. With her unconventional looks and prodigious tattoos, she’s breaking ground in the WWE women’s division just by being there. In fact, she arrived with the large chest tattoo that Paige was once implicitly threatened with the loss of her job for considering on Total Divas. On the other hand, it’s telling that she was brought up to Smackdown as a heel, despite being a babyface by nature and on NXT. But with her natural talent, charisma, and ability to get her bearing quickly in any situation, her ceiling at WWE is high, as long as those in charge let her rise to her potential.
After all, she’s been an underdog from day one, but she’s never stopped winning.
