NXT UK: Why you should be excited about new EVE champion Kay Lee Ray
By Laura Mauro
Last Saturday, Kay Lee Ray won the Pro Wrestling EVE Championship for the first time in her career. This week she makes her NXT UK debut. She’s on top of the world right now, and WWE viewers will soon have the privilege of seeing first hand why Kay Lee Ray is one of the most exciting performers in professional wrestling right now.
Kay Lee Ray’s triumphant victory over Nina Samuels at EVE’s ‘She Slams on Saturdays’ event was met with an outpouring of genuine joy. Ray has been a regular feature at EVE shows since her 2011 debut, and it’s almost astonishing to note that this is her first stint as champion for the London-based promotion.
But Ray is no slouch in the title department. With over a decade of wrestling experience, she has held the ICW Women’s Championship multiple times, and was the inaugural World of Sport Women’s Champion upon the promotion’s recent resurrection. She’s held the Defiant Women’s Championship, the Queen of Southside Championship, and retained the Scottish Women’s Championship for an incredible 755 days. And what’s really wild about all of this is that Kay Lee Ray is just 26 years old.
Ray’s EVE victory was a significant moment in an already storied career. At December’s SheVivor Series a visibly upset Ray told the crowd she would be taking some time away from wrestling. Struggling with exhaustion and injury issues, Ray – dubbed the Hardcore Daredevil for her fearless in-ring antics – stepped out of the ring for a few weeks to rest.
The crowd was universally sympathetic; EVE’s live experience is so up close and personal that the detachment you sometimes feel from watching wrestling at a distance is entirely erased. There is no doubt that these are human beings, taking hard bumps and heavy blows for our entertainment. When Kay Lee Ray tells you she needs a rest, it warrants taking seriously.
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Ray’s hiatus meant she missed her rightful opportunity to vie for Nina Samuels’ EVE Championship at SheVivor Series, where she had been pencilled in to join Charlie Morgan in a triple threat match. So reclaiming her title shot months later was a significant moment for the EVE regular. Former champions Charlie Morgan and Emi Sakura had both tried and failed to dethrone Samuels. But Kay Lee Ray – desperate to prove herself worthy of EVE’s highest accolade – surely represented the best shot at ending Samuels’ 100+ day reign.
Kay Lee Ray’s win represents the culmination of eight years of hard graft. Eight years of building a unique rapport with the crowd. Eight years of sacrificing her time, her body and her wellbeing for the sake of entertainment. For Kay Lee Ray to finally scoop the EVE Championship – and at EVE’s two-night International Women’s Day celebration to boot – is a beautiful piece of history, a moment that will play out over and over again in the highlight reel of Kay Lee Ray’s career. And it is a moment she shared with a room full of people deeply invested in her victory.
Along with her best friend and fellow Scot Viper, Kay Lee Ray has been scooped up by the WWE juggernaut as part of their NXT UK brand. It’s hardly surprising; her performance against Princesa Sugehit in the first Mae Young Classic instantly marked her out as one to watch. But there’s a lot more to Kay Lee Ray than that one match. She’s the one who put Viper through a chair covered in thumb tacks. She can match ‘Fearless’ Charlie Morgan dive for dive. She went toe to toe with Meiko Satomura at Wrestle Queendom and had an instant classic – still one of the finest pro-wrestling matches I’ve had the pleasure of viewing, regardless of gender.
So when I say that NXT UK fans ought to be very excited about Kay Lee Ray, it’s not just hot air. Ray has proven beyond a doubt that she is a worthy addition to any roster – strong, agile and completely dauntless, she is capable of pulling off the kind of matches you can watch over and over and never grow tired of. If Ray is this good at 26 years old, imagine what the future has in store. And on a roster absolutely packed with talent – from Rhea Ripley to Jinny, from Toni Storm to Dakota Kai – you’d better believe that Ray has what it takes to be one of the division’s stand-out performers.
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The Pro Wrestling EVE Championship has been the pinnacle of Kay Lee Ray’s career so far. How she’s going to top this achievement is anyone’s guess, but it’s going to be a hell of a ride finding out.