In the sideshow world of professional wrestling, there’s always one woman spinning through the chaos with a crooked grin and a suitcase full of half-finished dreams. For a time, that woman was Tenille Dashwood. She wasn’t the loudest, the strongest, or the most scandalous—she was just the one who kept showing up, putting her bruises on display like badges and asking for another round. Her story is less about championships and more about endurance, the long walk from Melbourne’s suburbs to the sterile, soul-sapping machine that is WWE—and out the other side with her wits mostly intact.
She grew up in Boronia, Victoria, a quiet little slice of Australia where the horizon didn’t suggest much more than suburban drift. But then her older brother introduced her to the glorious absurdity of wrestling. Stone Cold, Trish, Lita—big American saints smashing skulls and breaking norms. She fell hard for the spectacle, the noise, the pageantry. The bug bit deep, and like a true romantic chasing fireflies, she decided to follow the glow all the way around the world.
Tenille’s first taste of the business was humble—setting up rings, training when she could, and living with the kind of shoulder injury that would make a lesser human tap out before the bell. At 19, she crossed oceans to Canada, enrolling in Lance Storm’s wrestling academy. It wasn’t glamorous. It was cold, grueling, and buried under snow and body slams. But she came out sharp and lean, with a better lockup and a thicker skin. Wrestling, she found, wasn’t about being “good”—it was about refusing to disappear.
The indies welcomed her like they welcome everyone: with suspicion and beatings. She took her lumps in Canada, the States, back in Australia. By the time she showed up in SHIMMER in 2009 as Tenille Tayla, she had a little polish on her boots and a lot of sawdust in her lungs. She was all energy, hair whipping, limbs flying, smiling through the impact. And people noticed—not because she was flawless, but because she was fearless.
The WWE, that brutal machine of illusion, finally opened its gates. She signed in 2011, delayed by shoulder surgery, and walked into Florida Championship Wrestling with dreams stitched into her gear. She was repackaged, rebranded, and renamed “Emma”—a clumsy, awkward dancer with a flirty smile and zero menace. It was absurd, but she leaned into it. That’s the trick in WWE—lean into the stupidity until you make it yours.
Then came NXT, and a strange thing happened. The character clicked. The audience—always starving for something odd and sincere—latched onto her goofy dance and her underdog charm. She worked classic matches with Paige, Bayley, and Sasha Banks—sometimes winning, often not—but always earning that slow-building, grudging respect from fans who knew what effort smelled like.
The main roster, of course, is where dreams go to get suffocated. Emma was thrown into comedic fluff, paired with Santino Marella in bits that felt like rejected Saturday Night Live sketches. The wrestling took a back seat to slapstick, and when Santino retired, Emma drifted. She yo-yoed between NXT and the main roster, trying to find footing in a company that didn’t seem to know what to do with a woman unless she was either a bombshell or a boss.
So she tried to play their game—reinventing herself again and again. She went heel, rebranded, and for a surreal stretch in 2017 became “Emmalina,” a throwback diva gimmick she debuted only to reject in the same segment. It was high-performance art disguised as career sabotage. “You want the old-school cheesecake,” she seemed to say, “but I’ll give you whiplash instead.”
When they finally cut her in 2017, it was almost a mercy.
Most wrestlers collapse into obscurity after a WWE run like that—confused, broken, used up. But Tenille did what she always did. She picked herself up and hit the road. Indies, Ring of Honor, Impact. She kept moving. And more importantly—she kept connecting. With fans. With opponents. With herself. She stopped pretending. She started wrestling like she had nothing to prove and everything to feel.
In Ring of Honor, she was finally allowed to just wrestle. She battled Thunder Rosa, Deonna Purrazzo, Sumie Sakai—real fights, real effort. And when her autoimmune disease flared and her shoulder gave out, she took the time she needed. No apologies. No fake smiles. Just the grim acceptance that the body is a fragile temple and wrestling is a demolition derby.
Then came Impact Wrestling—a safe haven for the bruised and brave. As part of The Influence with Madison Rayne, she finally got to play the villain on her own terms. She snagged the Knockouts Tag Titles, tangled with Jordynne Grace, Taya Valkyrie, Rosemary, and made her mark not with dominance, but with defiance. She showed up every week, hurt or not, and said, “I’m still here.”
She returned to WWE in 2022 for one more dance—this time under her real name again. A nostalgic pop. A match with Ronda Rousey. A Royal Rumble spot. A flickering candle before the lights went out again in 2023. The business had changed, the office was colder, and the game had evolved past the players who still gave a damn. So she left again. No bitterness. Just honesty.
Now she floats. Indie shows. Patreon content. A Twitch stream here, an Instagram photo there. She lives her life in Oslo with her partner. No glitz, no pyro, just peace—and maybe that’s the most rebellious thing she ever did.
Tenille Dashwood never held the world title, never main-evented WrestleMania, never got her due on the billboards. But she lived it. All of it. The dusty high school gyms, the cold hotel floors, the impossible expectations, the concussion protocols, the repackaging, the rejection, and the redemption.
She’s not a cautionary tale. She’s a blueprint for surviving the circus.
And sometimes, just surviving is the biggest win there is.
