They don’t make fairy tales like this one. No glass slippers. No enchanted castles. Just a pair of wrestling boots laced with ambition, a woman who danced with pain like it was a former lover, and a business that chews people up and then pretends it never knew their name. Kimber Lee, born Kimberly Frankele, didn’t walk into wrestling looking to be a diva. She came to kick doors down and leave heel prints on the backs of anyone who doubted her.
She started in Seattle, chasing ballet dreams before trading pirouettes for powerbombs. Dance turned into destruction. The mat replaced the stage. And by the time she graduated from the Combat Zone Wrestling Academy — as its first female graduate no less — she was already tired of waiting for permission. She didn’t look the part of a street fighter, but her fists sure did.
Her early work in CZW was like learning to waltz in a mosh pit. Blood, barbed wire, testosterone, and bravado. Kimber Lee carved out her place in that carnivorous locker room by beating the brakes off whoever stood across from her, male or female. She teamed with Drew Gulak to form “A Campaign for a Better Combat Zone,” which was wrestling code for “We’ll beat you, then give you a lecture about it.”
She didn’t just exist in the indies — she painted herself across them like graffiti. In Women Superstars Uncensored, she and Annie Social called themselves “Chicks Using Nasty Tactics,” a name that felt like a mission statement. They won tag titles, lost them, and won them again like it was all part of the chaos she fed off. The Kimber Bombs — her pairing with Cherry Bomb — took over Shine and Shimmer, holding tag gold like a pair of anarchist brides tearing through the scene with lip gloss and knuckle dusters.
But it wasn’t just tag teams and toughness. Kimber had finesse, storytelling chops, and enough ring IQ to make most bookers blush. She wasn’t wrestling to be somebody’s valet or afterthought — she wanted to rewrite the whole damn playbook.
Then came Chikara. And Princess KimberLee.
It should’ve been absurd. The tiara. The name. The sugary façade. But she spun it into art. Like a hammer wrapped in silk, Princess KimberLee was dangerous beneath the sparkle. In 2015, she became the first woman to win the Chikara Grand Championship — the top title in a men’s promotion. That’s not just history. That’s a fire alarm going off in a cathedral full of tradition. She beat Hallowicked to win it, and in doing so, shoved a stiletto heel right into the neck of pro wrestling’s gender dogma.
She worked WWE next. Repackaged as Abbey Laith, they stuck her in a cookie-cutter mold, flattened out all her edges, and tried to rebrand her as something safer. It didn’t fit. Not because she couldn’t hack it — but because you don’t cram a Molotov cocktail into a scented candle jar and expect it to stay quiet.
She got further than most. She made it to the quarterfinals of the Mae Young Classic, showed heart, and then — like so many who aren’t molded for the WWE machine — she was cut loose in 2018. Just another talent the suits didn’t know how to market. Just another war horse they left out in the rain.
But she wasn’t done. Not by a long shot.
She kept moving. Stardom in Japan. Impact Wrestling in the U.S. She aligned with Deonna Purrazzo, threw down with Jordynne Grace, Jazz, Su Yung, Havok — all women who could snap your collarbone with a handshake. Kimber fought them like she was trying to erase time, to make the world remember what it had overlooked.
Then came the darkness.
The Su Yung storyline in Impact had her dragged into an undead dimension — metaphorical perhaps, but it hit closer to reality than anyone realized. Kimber was transformed into something more grotesque, more twisted. But even without the makeup and kayfabe, there was something breaking beneath the surface.
She retired in 2023, quietly and with the weariness of someone who’d seen too much. And it wasn’t just the bruises or the bumps that sent her away — it was the reality of the wrestling industry and what it leaves behind in its wake. The silence after the roar. The cold when the lights go out. The very real scars you can’t explain to the fans in row five who still chant your name.
Her personal life, as much as she tried to guard it, became tabloid fodder. A marriage to fellow wrestler Zachary Wentz (Zachary Green) that spiraled into allegations of abuse. A DUI. A charge for battery on a law enforcement officer. The headlines didn’t tell the whole story — they never do — but they suggested that maybe the pain she inflicted in the ring was never quite as deep as what she was wrestling outside of it.
Through it all, Kimber Lee remained fiercely unapologetic. A vegan, a survivor, a rebel. A woman who stood toe-to-toe with monsters and princesses, and sometimes played both roles in the same match. She had demons. She danced with them nightly. And when she got tired, she didn’t fall — she walked away.
Her legacy isn’t perfect. But it’s real.
She was never supposed to be the face of a company. Too volatile. Too real. Too much of a threat to the cardboard-cutout aesthetic wrestling sometimes demands of its women. But she was a pioneer — bloodied and brilliant — who proved you didn’t need to be what they wanted. You could be what you needed. Kimber Lee didn’t wrestle for flowers. She wrestled for fire.
And she lit the ring on fire every damn time.
