In a business full of larger-than-life characters, Christie Ricci might’ve been the most quietly dangerous woman you forgot to watch out for.
She didn’t enter wrestling as a legacy kid or a reality show project. She wasn’t handed anything under fluorescent lights or pushed with corporate fireworks. Christie Ricci—also known to some fans as Glory—built her name the old-fashioned way: match by match, ligament by ligament, across bingo halls, Mexican arenas, and military bases where the pop was real and the pain was constant.
She was never just a wrestler. She was a technician in glitter and bruises. A thinker in a world of screamers. She graduated with a master’s in business while also learning the finer points of selling a suplex. And for a brief but meaningful stretch, she held one of the most prestigious titles in the world: the NWA World Women’s Championship.
Ricci didn’t have a career. She built a résumé soaked in sweat.
Born to Compete, Trained by the Best
Born November 11, 1982, in Clinton, Mississippi, Ricci’s early life sounds like it was plucked out of a wrestling fan’s fever dream. She was childhood friends with Ted DiBiase Jr., and through him, fell in love with the ring. Not the pageantry—though that would come later—but the fundamentals. The holds. The pacing. The psychology. She loved Dynamite Kid and Bret Hart, Eddie Gilbert and Eddie Guerrero, and even Chris Benoit—the latter a tragic footnote in history, but a common technical idol of the era.
After two years of college, she aimed for Atlanta to train while finishing school, but fate rerouted her to Nashville when she met Leilani Kai. And you don’t just say no to a legend like Leilani Kai. Under her guidance, Ricci debuted in June 2002, and the world got its first taste of a woman who could grapple with your spine while calculating your market value.
That same year, she was named Rookie of the Year by the Professional Girl Wrestling Association. It wasn’t hype—it was a warning.
Early Gold, Sudden Injury
Ricci didn’t spend long waiting to make an impact. Within her first two years, she won Mexico’s LLF Championship by toppling Miss Janeth, and took the XWF Women’s Championship as well. She was rising fast, and more importantly, she was rising legitimately—no overhyped push, no parachute.
Then came February 2004. A re-aggravated knee injury in Mexico sent her to surgery and put the brakes on everything. In pro wrestling, a knee injury is a coin flip. You either come back stronger or you fade into convention appearances. Ricci came back pissed off and determined.
By that summer, she was back in Mexico, still working through the pain. Then came All Pro Wrestling’s ChickFight tournament in October. She beat Tiffany in the first round but ran into Cheerleader Melissa in Round Two. That match didn’t go her way—but Melissa, already a known killer, gave Ricci a fight that validated her place among the elite.
The next night, Ricci beat three women—Hailey Hatred, Candace LeRae, and Nikki Roxx—in a four-way elimination match. The knee? It held up. The momentum? It was back.
A Champion’s Year
On October 8, 2005, Ricci reached the pinnacle of her career when she defeated Lexie Fyfe and Tasha Simone in a three-way match to win the NWA World Women’s Championship. It wasn’t just a belt. It was history. That title traces its roots to the Fabulous Moolah, to June Byers, to Debbie Combs. It’s one of the few things in wrestling that still meanssomething when you say it out loud.
Ricci held that belt for over a year—old-school style. No hot potato, no flukes. Just grinding defenses, traveling shows, and matches that rarely made TV but always mattered to the women in the ring.
She dropped the title to MsChif on January 27, 2007, but not before carving out a reign that demanded respect in a time when women’s wrestling was still too often treated as intermission filler.
Everywhere and Nowhere: The Indie Odyssey
What followed was a career that spanned every imaginable corner of the wrestling world: Memphis, WEW, Southern All-Star Wrestling, CWA, and stints in both Shimmer and the resurrected LLF in Mexico.
She was a chameleon—sometimes technical, sometimes brawling, always professional. She lost to Jazz one night and beat Lollipop the next. Faced Cindy Rogers, Naomi Banks, Angel Orsini. The names changed, the gear changed, the venues changed. The fight never did.
By 2009, she took on a new name—Glory—as part of the all-female Wrestlicious promotion. It was a campy, over-the-top slice of televised cheesecake, complete with tongue-in-cheek gimmicks and rhyming promos. But Ricci didn’t phone it in.
On May 24, 2010, she became the inaugural Wrestlicious Champion by defeating Felony in a match that, for all its sugarcoated theatrics, still reminded everyone that under the pageantry, she was still Christie Ricci. Still a killer. Still the same woman who’d held the NWA strap.
Brains Over Bombast
Outside the ring, Ricci wasn’t just working on powerbombs—she was working on a business plan. She earned a bachelor’s in business in 2004 and followed it up with a master’s in 2007. She trained in bodybuilding, modeled in fitness magazines, and never let the bumps and bruises distract her from the bigger picture.
Wrestling was her platform. It wasn’t her prison.
She didn’t chase WWE, and maybe WWE never came calling. But in the smoke and blood of the independent circuit, she made a name that meant something.
She was a technician. A traveler. A businesswoman. A champion.
The Final Word
Christie Ricci didn’t leave behind a viral moment or a household name.
She left behind something rarer: respect.
Ask the women who fought her. Ask the promoters who booked her. Ask the fans who remember the NWA title actually meaning something in 2005.
She didn’t just wrestle. She studied it, honored it, and beat it into shape.
Glory was the nickname.
Christie Ricci was the work.
