In a sport built on illusion, where kayfabe once blurred truth like cigarette smoke in a VFW hall, Arianna Grace—real name Bianca Carelli—walks a tightrope between satin and steel. Pageant sash in one hand, a wrist lock in the other. She enters the ring with the poise of a ballroom dancer and exits like a thunderstorm in heels. If her father, Santino Marella, was a vaudevillian hurricane of comedy and chaos, then Grace is a tempest with mascara and a mean streak.
Born in Mississauga, Ontario, in 1997, she grew up watching her father evolve from MMA hopeful to wrestling cult hero, turning pratfalls into pyrotechnics. But Grace wasn’t interested in becoming a punchline. She came for the crown, not the comedy. And by the time she hit 17—winning Miss Teen Ontario-World—she was already carving out her own chapter in the family legacy, the same way a street kid might carve initials into wet pavement: bold, stubborn, and there to stay.
She studied biology at Western University, but what she really dissected was performance. Grace mixed martial arts training with judo, jiu-jitsu, and boxing—fighting styles that smell of blood and gym mats. Not the glitter of stage lights. But that’s where her contradictions breathe. She can throw a jab and walk a runway, stretch an armbar and still strike a pose that would make a Maxim photographer sigh.
In 2018, she cut her teeth in the independents under the tutelage of Canadian brawler Tyson Dux. It was less glitz, more grind—a place where the rings creak and the pay barely covers gas money. But Grace learned what mattered most: how to tell a story between the ropes without needing words, only pain and precision. She showed flashes of promise in the NWA’s Women’s Invitational at EmPowerrr, falling short but leaving behind a trail of bruised egos and curious promoters.
WWE came calling in March 2022, handing Grace a ticket to NXT and a new name: Arianna Grace. And just like that, the bloodlines came full circle. The daughter of a man once known for cobras and comedy now found herself in Orlando, where kayfabe lives like an aging showgirl—still flashy, still dangerous.
Her debut came on NXT Level Up, where she outclassed Amari Miller. It wasn’t just the win—it was the poise. Grace didn’t move like a rookie. She glided, calculating each step like a chess move in four-inch heels. But the road to the top was paved in torn ligaments. A torn ACL sidelined her for nearly a year. For some, that’s the kind of injury that packs your boots for you. Not her. She came back leaner, meaner, and with a gimmick that shimmered: “Miss NXT”—a pageant queen with punchlines and piledrivers.
If the modern wrestling ring is part soap opera, part street fight, Grace dances between both like a Broadway understudy who’s read every scene and still knows how to throw a chair. She made it to the semi-finals of the 2023 Women’s Breakout Tournament and tangled with the likes of Gigi Dolin and Sol Ruca. She didn’t win it all, but she never faded either. She stayed in the rearview mirror of every contender like a ghost in lipstick, always one misstep away from cracking the glass.
Then came TNA.
In a move that blurred kayfabe harder than a busted nose, Grace debuted on Impact! as the liaison between TNA and NXT. Real life bled into storyline. She stood next to her father—now TNA’s Director of Authority—and brought generational charisma to a locker room that had seen better days. They teamed together at Against All Odds and even lost together. Wrestling is a weird kind of poetry: one where you lose beautifully and still walk out the curtain taller.
But the real meat of Arianna Grace isn’t in title wins or losses. It’s in moments. Like when she faced Dolin in a “makeover match,” which ended not with a chair shot or a clean finish but a disqualification for a low blow—the kind of surreal twist that makes the old-timers groan and the internet light up like a truck stop neon sign. Or when she stood next to Karmen Petrovic, tagging in for a match neither of them wanted. They won, then fought each other days later. Wrestling logic: you brawl with your enemies and your friends, often in the same week.
There’s versatility in her story—the pageant queen with a degree in biology, turned submission grappler, turned wrestling starlet. She doesn’t drink cheap gin in dingy bars or howl at the moon in parking lots, but she fights with the same cracked-glass poetry. She’s part diva, part destroyer. Miss America with a sleeper hold.
Her multicultural background—Italian, Pakistani, Métis, and Finnish—makes her a walking intersection of identity and contradiction. She competed in Miss Universe Canada in 2023 and placed in the top 20. Not bad for someone who once got booed in Florida for winning with too much class.
As of 2025, Grace is recovering from another injury. The rumors swirl—was it minor? Was it career-altering? The truth, like most things in pro wrestling, will leak out between matches. But if her past has taught us anything, it’s this: she’s not done. Not even close. Like a pageant girl with a shiv in her sash, she knows how to wait, how to pose, how to strike.
The daughter of a punchline is trying to write something different now. She’s not here to be anyone’s joke. Not her father’s. Not the internet’s. Not even the business’s. Arianna Grace isn’t just another pretty face in the Performance Center buffet line. She’s the meal. She’s here for the crown, the belt, the story—and whatever comes next in this strange, glittering, bloodstained theater called wrestling.
And when she comes back, don’t blink.
She’ll be smiling.
Right before she takes your head off.