She entered the ring not as a wrestler but as a séance. Vannarah Riggs didn’t lace her boots so much as she buried them six feet deep and dared the world to follow. Su Yung was the kind of character you don’t wrestle—you exorcise. You don’t pin her—you pray she doesn’t follow you home.
Born on June 30, 1989, Riggs wrestled under many names—Sonia, Susie, Susan—but it was Su Yung that left claw marks on the walls of Impact Wrestling, the name spoken in hushed tones by fans who still wake up with cold sweats. To call her a two-time Knockouts Champion is factually correct, but it’s like calling a tornado a “weather event.” It misses the point entirely.
Riggs began her odyssey in Memphis in 2007, the city of Elvis, ribs, and broken dreams. The indies were a patchwork of bingo halls and gymnasiums that smelled like spilled beer and broken cartilage. Su Yung was born out of that grind—shaped in the crucible of the cheap pop, the bump card, and the 12-hour car ride to nowhere. She clawed her way through Jerry Lawler’s Memphis Wrestling and GCW like a stray dog fighting for scraps behind a Waffle House.
In 2010, WWE signed her to a developmental contract. They called her Sonia, then Vannah—names as generic as the plastic smiles in Stamford. She made it to Florida Championship Wrestling, WWE’s minor leagues at the time, where she lost to AJ Lee and tag-teamed with Audrey Marie in forgettable matches that probably made Vince yawn mid-cigar puff. In August 2011, they cut her loose. WWE couldn’t see the value in her then. But that rejection lit the fuse.
She found herself again on the indie circuit, a haunted woman with a suitcase full of face paint and vengeance. In SHIMMER and SHINE, she left trails of glitter, blood, and confusion. She formed alliances, betrayed them, wrestled as the smiling babyface one night and the unholy demon spawn the next. She was wrestling’s version of a fever dream—unpredictable, surreal, and more real than anyone wanted to admit.
But it was in Impact Wrestling that Su Yung truly became something terrifyingly permanent. She wasn’t booked—she was summoned. Debuting in 2018, she interrupted a marriage proposal with mist and mayhem. She didn’t feud, she infected. She dragged Rosemary into a casket, set it on fire, and held funerals on television like she was the ringmaster of a circus from Hell. She introduced her undead bridesmaids—ghouls in wedding dresses—and misted opponents in the face like a pissed-off dragon bride.
She didn’t win the Knockouts Title. She conquered it. At Under Pressure, she defeated Allie in a Last Rites match and cradled the title like a dead lover. Her reign wasn’t just about the belt—it was about possession, domination, the kind of psychological warfare that made even her victories feel like burials. Madison Rayne fell next, followed by more chaos until Tessa Blanchard took the title and, for a moment, turned the page.
But Su Yung was never just one persona. She fractured like a mirror dropped in a haunted house. There was Susie—the sweet, naive amnesiac, wrestling like she wandered in off the street and forgot who she was. Then there was Susan—a corporate Karen in a pantsuit who made wrestlers want to tap out just from her voice. It was meta-performance art. It was theatre. It was madness.
And yet, somehow, all of these characters worked. Susie was innocence weaponized. Susan was satire in stilettos. But Su Yung? She was pure, undistilled violence. She didn’t break the fourth wall; she bled all over it.
Her storylines were absurd, and yet, they worked because she committed to them like an actor drowning in method. She went to the “Undead Realm” like it was Shakespeare in a meat grinder. She “killed” Allie. Got dragged into spiritual battles by Rosemary. Resurrected herself more times than The Undertaker. Hell, she even got “murdered” by Havok and came back anyway, like she’d just taken a nap in the afterlife.
When other wrestlers lost matches, they tapped out or got pinned. When Su Yung lost, it usually involved coffins, mist, ritual sacrifice, and fire. You didn’t just beat Su Yung. You survived her.
In 2021, she turned the dial up even further. Susan turned back into Su Yung, this time dragging Brandi Lauren and Kimber Lee into her twisted bridal army like a cult leader who read too much Poe. Just when the viewers thought they couldn’t get any more twisted plotlines, Su Yung announced she was pregnant—on a wrestling show. And it worked. Because by then, anything less than supernatural wouldn’t have made sense.
Outside the ring, Riggs has lived her own winding tale. She married fellow wrestler Rich Swann in 2017. Their personal life became tabloid fodder after a public incident that led to Swann’s arrest—but the charges were later dropped due to insufficient evidence. In 2022, they welcomed their first child—a son.
Riggs’ in-ring future remains uncertain. Between the physical toll and the roles she’s played, it’s not clear what mask, if any, she’ll wear again. But whether as Su Yung, Susan, or Susie, Vannarah Riggs proved something that few wrestlers ever do: you don’t have to be real to be unforgettable. You just have to haunt the place after you’ve gone.
And haunt she did.
In a business built on clichés, Su Yung was a ghost story with a steel chair. A living, breathing metaphor for every woman who got knocked down and came back with a grin full of fangs. She didn’t wrestle matches. She wrote nightmares in mascara and blood.
And like any good ghost story, even now, the silence she left behind is louder than a scream.