There are some stories in pro wrestling you inherit like a blood curse. They don’t come with titles or trust funds. They come with baggage, scars, and echoes—usually from the roar of an arena crowd that once cheered for your father like he was Christ in a kilt. Ariel Teal Toombs, better known as Teal Piper, didn’t walk into wrestling. She tiptoed into a minefield with her father’s boots tied around her neck like an albatross.
Roddy Piper’s shadow was never going to be easy to outpace. He wasn’t just a legend; he was a cyclone of violence, wit, and bagpipes, blowing through the ’80s like wrestling’s patron saint of beautiful chaos. For Teal, the decision to step into the ring wasn’t just about legacy—it was about survival. Wrestling wasn’t just in her blood, it was her reckoning.
Teal’s origin story isn’t typical. She didn’t come up through the dojos of Tokyo or the barns of Georgia. She came through casting calls and callbacks, graduating from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Los Angeles. Her early credits sound like the kind of grindhouse dreams cooked up in a liquor-soaked writer’s room—Shut Up and Shoot!, Psycho Sleepover, Hell’s Belles. Titles that feel like her eventual ring entrance: theatrical, weird, and loud.
But make no mistake—Piper is no dilettante playing wrestler. She’s not here to cosplay the business. She’s here to becomeit.
She first tasted the ropes in 2019, walking into All Elite Wrestling’s Casino Battle Royale with swagger and skepticism. Wrestling fans can be cruel bastards, especially to second-generation hopefuls. But Teal didn’t blink. Didn’t beg for applause. She showed up with a sleeper hold, an eye poke, and the kind of raw charisma you don’t teach—you bleed it. Just like her old man.
Soon after, she became a centerpiece in Women of Wrestling, not just as a brawler but as a broadcaster of mischief. Her “Teal Talks” segment was equal parts late-night absurdity and pipe bomb therapy. She had that Piper gift—she could make you laugh, then make you hate yourself for it.
Teal was chaos with a lipstick smile. A woman who’d rather spit venom than shake hands. In a sea of Instagram clones and TikTok champions, she was a throwback—gritty, odd, unpredictable. The kind of character wrestling forgot it needed.
2020 brought new dimensions. Training with Ronda Rousey—because if you’re going to learn to throw hands, why not learn from the armbar assassin herself? The result was a meaner, sharper Piper. One who could now actually back up the family name with strikes instead of shtick. She took that newly sharpened edge into the southern indie scene, crisscrossing Alabama and Mississippi in the kind of bingo halls that smell like sweat, regret, and beer from 1994.
With her fiancé Deimos in tow, the two formed “House of Heathens”—a duo so theatrical, they made the Addams Family look like choir kids. But Teal didn’t just work the gimmick—she worked the grind. 2022 saw her wrestle in Greece for ZMAK Wrestling, a surreal pitstop on a journey that often feels like Hunter S. Thompson ghostwrote her bookings.
She returned to AEW in 2023 on Dark, losing to Anna Jay A.S. and Tay Melo. No shame in that. This wasn’t about win-loss records—it was about carving out a voice, a look, a feel. Something uniquely hers. Not Roddy’s kid. Not a nostalgia act. But Teal Piper, sharp and self-made.
Then came Ring of Honor, where she dropped a match to Diamante but left an impression. That same summer, she pulled off the kind of win that indie dreams are made of—defeating Allysin Kay and Leva Bates in a three-way dance to win the Atomic Legacy Wrestling Women’s Championship. In that moment, it wasn’t Roddy Piper’s daughter hoisting a title. It was Teal. A woman who earned every inch of that canvas.
Her ring style? A cocktail of sleaze and smarts. She’ll charm you, then poke your eyes out when you’re not looking. A wink, a stomp, a sleeper. Some say she wrestles like a jazz musician who just dropped her sheet music—improvised, wild, unpredictable. And yes, she’s got her father’s smirk. But her sneer? That belongs to her.
Outside the ropes, she still plays the daughter. In 2024, she loaned WWE her father’s gear—his Starrcade chain, WrestleMania II trunks, and that kilt that once made grown men cry. It was a gesture of respect, but it also felt like a moment of exorcism. Here, take the ghosts. I’ve got my own damn story to write now.
She returned to the spotlight again in 2025, beating Kaci Lennox at Shine 82. It wasn’t WrestleMania. It wasn’t a world title. But it was another brick in the temple she’s building, one match at a time. A career not of grandeur but of grit.
You see, Teal Piper isn’t here to replace anyone. She’s not the next Roddy. She’s not even trying to be the first Teal. She’s something else entirely. Something strange, unfinished, and oddly captivating. A woman in love with a business that chews up most of its romantics.
In a world of performance centers and sanitized promos, Teal Piper feels like a splinter in the sport’s polished floorboards. An artist moonlighting as a fighter. Or maybe a fighter moonlighting as an artist. Either way, she’s proof that sometimes the most interesting wrestlers aren’t the ones chasing belts. They’re the ones chasing ghosts—and beating them with a sleeper hold and a punchline.
Her name is Piper, sure. But the tune she’s playing? That one’s all her own.
