Some wrestlers are born into it. Bloodlines, barns, family dynasties soaked in old canvas sweat. Not Rebel. She came at it from the side, like a car wreck on a hot Oklahoma highway—unexpected, loud, a little ridiculous, and impossible to ignore. Born Tanea Brooks on September 8, 1978, in Owasso, Oklahoma, she was a cheerleader, dancer, lingerie football player, makeup artist, and country music video vixen before she ever set foot in a ring. Wrestling didn’t find her. She kicked in its door with heels on and glitter in her hair.
She made the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders at 18. That tells you a lot. That kind of discipline, that kind of presentation—smile wide enough to blind a man, legs strong enough to kill one. She was on calendars, on TV, on the field. But there was always something else gnawing underneath all that polish. Something feral. She danced with Christy Hemme’s burlesque troupe “The Purrfect Angelz,” twirled on country music stages as Trace Adkins’ “badonkadonk” girl, and played full-contact football in the Lingerie Football League like it was a scene out of Rollerball remade by Dolly Parton.
Then came pro wrestling, the final frontier for women who like their mascara clumped and their ribs bruised. Hemme vouched for her to TNA, and in 2014, Rebel emerged from the circus smoke of The Menagerie—a bizarre, carny-stable that looked like something cooked up during a meth binge in a traveling freak show. With Knux, Crazzy Steve, and a musclehead named The Freak, she wasn’t just eye candy. She was spectacle. A living, breathing firecracker painted in leather and glitter.
Her in-ring debut came with an arm fracture, the kind of injury that makes most rookies rethink their dreams. Not Rebel. She came back swinging, busted arm and all, because pain was just another shade in her makeup kit. For years, she teetered between novelty and potential, never quite positioned as a serious title threat but always one bump, one chair shot, one storyline away from breaking out. She wasn’t wrestling to climb a ladder. She was there to blow it up.
When The Menagerie dissolved, she floated like a tattooed ghost across the TNA landscape, finding a new home with The Dollhouse, the twisted Barbie nightmare faction led by Jade and Marti Bell. In this sadistic sorority, Rebel turned heel and turned heads—slinking into ringside attacks and promos dripping with malicious pigtails and sickly-sweet violence. She never quite stole the spotlight, but she was always in its glow—an unpredictable blend of chaos and camp.
Even as her character teetered between threat and comic relief, her resilience was dead serious. In OVW, she fought like a woman with something to prove—racking up wins, losing titles, and coming back for more like the ring was her rehab. She captured the OVW Women’s Championship in 2016 and defended it with the kind of gritted teeth you don’t get from Hollywood makeup school. For Rebel, everything was a performance—sure—but it was also a dare. She dared you to dismiss her. Then she cracked a forearm across your jaw for trying.
Her work in Japan with World Wonder Ring Stardom was the closest she came to pure, unscripted credibility. In 2017, she stepped into the crucible of Japanese joshi wrestling—a world where the matches are stiff, the crowds are sharp, and mercy is a foreign word. She faced Toni Storm, Io Shirai, Hana Kimura. She lost a lot. But sometimes the best stories aren’t about winning—they’re about surviving. She took those losses like tattoos and came home with more respect than belts.
In AEW, she found something rarer than a title run: reinvention. Hired originally as a hair and makeup artist for the women’s division, she wound up onscreen again—this time as “Reba,” the reluctant personal assistant to Britt Baker, D.M.D., AEW’s resident egomaniac dentist and real-life charisma bomb. The pairing was gold. Rebel, as Reba, played the part of the sycophant with deadpan genius—screaming, cheating, groveling, and grimacing her way into AEW lore. She became a walking punchline with perfect timing, the Lucy to Britt’s Desi, the Barney to her Andy—only with more mascara and more steel chairs.
She lost matches. Fast ones. Embarrassing ones. But Rebel didn’t need wins to get over. She made you watch. She made you laugh. And when her kneecap popped out mid-match in 2021, she made you flinch—and then, true to form, tried to keep going.
That’s the paradox of Rebel: she’s not the workrate darling, the five-star general, or the technical master. She’s a showgirl in a blood sport. A dancer in a cage fight. But underneath the performance, there’s grit that won’t quit. A woman who came to the industry late, got chewed up by its politics and booking, and still carved out a place by being exactly what she was—loud, loyal, and unrelenting.
Her resume reads like a fever dream: Cowboys cheerleader, burlesque dancer, LFL player, wrestler, valet, makeup artist, heel turn, babyface bounce-back, guest on Dog Whisperer, backup dancer for Trace Adkins, and a recurring figure in Full Throttle Saloon. You try surviving that many gimmick changes and still coming out with a busted grin and a hairbrush in one hand.
Rebel isn’t just a performer. She’s a survivor. One who made a career out of scraps and scenery. She never won the Knockouts title. She never main-evented WrestleMania. But she outlasted flashier stars, more gifted athletes, and countless would-be divas who didn’t have the stomach for the grind.
Tanea Brooks came into the wrestling world like a firework launched from a muddy field—beautiful, erratic, always seconds from blowing up in the best or worst possible way. And in a business where even legends get forgotten, Rebel’s still here. Still walking backstage. Still laughing with the girls. Still getting back up.
Not everyone can be champion. But Rebel? She made damn sure you’d remember her name—even if you kept calling her Reba.
