She entered the ring like a freight train dipped in obsidian—5’10” of carved thunder, walking muscle, and unapologetic intimidation. They called her Midnight, but Ann-Marie Crooks was anything but silent. She was the kind of woman who didn’t need a spotlight—she dragged it behind her, ripped from the hands of those who doubted her worth.
Before the ring and before the pyros, there were barbells and sun-scorched gym floors. Crooks was a bodybuilder first, and a damn good one. Born in Jamaica, raised on resolve, she took her talent to the stage and made it bend to her will. Ms. Sunshine State in 1992. First place at Ms. Florida in ’93. And second at the NPC Nationals in ’94, a step below glory but miles ahead of average.
She wasn’t one of those delicate pageant bodybuilders, either—the kind who flexed pretty and posed polite. No, Crooks competed like she had something to prove and no patience for nonsense. She brought thunder to the posing platform, and if you didn’t like it, you could spot her from the wings and get the hell out of the way.
But the stage wasn’t enough. Not for Ann-Marie.
She flirted with the idea of aeronautical engineering once. The skies. Calculations. Precision. Then she said screw it and joined the U.S. Air Force instead, where she spent two years stationed in Germany. That’s the thing about Crooks—she didn’t wait for permission to rewrite her story. She just burned the damn page.
And in 1999, she turned the page again.
World Championship Wrestling came calling.
By then, WCW was a mad circus of egos, contracts, and chaos—a company riding its own decay like it was a rollercoaster headed straight into the sun. But into that wreckage stepped Midnight. Trained at the WCW Power Plant, she wasn’t some swimsuit model hoping for airtime. She was a one-woman wrecking crew wrapped in muscle and mystery.
They billed her as the sister of Harlem Heat—Booker T and Stevie Ray—two brothers who’d already scorched tag team gold into WCW’s legacy. Midnight was supposed to be the X-factor, the muscle in a leather duster, the silent power that shifted matches by just stepping onto the apron.
But wrestling, for all its showmanship, has always had a complicated relationship with women who could actually hurt you.
Midnight wasn’t eye candy. She wasn’t a diva. She was biceps and fury, high-impact and low tolerance. And WCW didn’t know what the hell to do with that.
Still, she made noise. She turned heads. She showed up at Mayhem, at Starrcade, at Souled Out. She stood tall while others coasted on reputation. She even wrestled intergender matches—not as a novelty, but as a threat. She feuded with Stevie Ray in a storyline that dripped with family betrayal and overcooked creative. It wasn’t Shakespeare, but in the cracked mirror of WCW booking, it was as close to character development as you’d get.
The crowd saw it. They knew. Midnight wasn’t just a valet. She was potential. Dangerous, legitimate potential.
But just as she began to gain traction, she was gone.
Her WCW run was shorter than a sneeze in a thunderstorm—blink and you missed it. In a company bloated with overpaid ex-WWE fossils and backstage drama that made soap operas look subtle, there wasn’t room for a woman who didn’t fit the mold. Midnight didn’t fit in the mold. She shattered it and left the pieces on Bischoff’s desk.
And that was it.
By 2000, she was off television. WCW was unraveling. The Monday Night Wars were closing shop. And Ann-Marie Crooks, one of the most physically imposing women to ever step into the business, was quietly walking away while less talented names kept failing upward.
She didn’t chase the indie circuit or do shoot interviews in dim hotel rooms. She didn’t cry on podcasts about missed opportunities. She just lived.
She became a realtor. A wife. A Floridian with more muscles than most men at Gold’s Gym and the kind of calm that only comes from knowing exactly who the hell you are.
It’s easy to forget someone like Midnight in the bloated history of wrestling. She didn’t win titles. Didn’t get a farewell tour. But she made her mark. Brief. Loud. Permanent.
And somewhere out there, maybe in a Florida gym, maybe at a quiet open house, there’s a woman who once squared her jaw under arena lights, wore leather like armor, and stepped into the chaos of WCW with nothing but her fists and her pride.
Ann-Marie Crooks didn’t get the push she deserved. But she never begged for it, either.
She didn’t need to.
Because at the end of the day, when the gimmicks fade and the belts collect dust, there’s something to be said for the few who walked into the lion’s den, flexed, and dared the lions to come closer.
Midnight didn’t run the game.
But she sure as hell made it pause.
