In the golden circus of pro wrestling—where storylines are stitched in spandex and pain is sold with a spotlight—Erica Porter never whispered. She growled. She pounced. She owned. As Jungle Grrrl, she didn’t just step between the ropes—she swung in from the canopy with a war cry loud enough to rattle the rafters.
And for a moment, a long moment, she ruled the jungle.
Porter broke onto the scene in 2000 with Women of Wrestling during its first chaotic season—when the industry didn’t know if it was selling action or novelty, and most female performers were treated more like centerfolds than athletes. But Jungle Grrrl was different. She wasn’t built for calendars. She was built for combat.
She collided with Terri Gold in a feud that wasn’t about cosmetics—it was about survival. She fought like someone who’d been handed too many no’s and finally decided to bite the word in half. Her character was primal. Her presence, unshakable. While others struck poses, Jungle Grrrl struck nerves.
Then, in 2001, just as quickly as she came in swinging, she vanished into the shadows. Wrestling does that to people—burns bright and disappears, like a shot of whiskey you barely remember taking.
But the jungle doesn’t forget its queen.
By 2002, she resurfaced in Ultimate Pro Wrestling. UPW was the minor-league factory where stars were forged from raw ambition and cheap lighting. There, Jungle Grrrl collected titles like they owed her money—twice crowned UPW Women’s Champion. Then came IZW, where she reigned for a savage 601 days. That’s not a championship run—that’s ownership. She held that belt like a grudge, daring anyone to take it from her. Most didn’t try.
Then silence. Again.
Years passed. Spotlights dimmed. The roar softened.
But in 2013, Jungle Grrrl returned to WOW like an old god waking up from a deep sleep. And this time, she wasn’t swinging for the crowd. She was swinging for legacy.
On March 9, she beat Lana Star and became WOW World Champion. She didn’t just defend the title—she defined it. For 1,300 days, she ruled with the ferocity of a lioness guarding her pride. That’s not just a record—it’s a reign carved into stone. Long before wrestling Twitter crowned every new champion “the greatest ever,” Jungle Grrrl did the work and made it matter.
She dropped the title to Santana Garrett in 2016. Came up short against Tessa Blanchard in 2018. And in 2019, she walked away—retired from wrestling not in defeat, but in defiance. Most careers end with a whisper. Hers ended with a snarl.
Then came June 2020. The kind of gut punch even steel chairs can’t prepare you for.
Stage 4 breast cancer. No storyline. No crowd.
Just the quiet reality that the fight doesn’t stop when the cameras cut. Life, as Bukowski would say, has teeth, and sometimes it bites down hard enough to draw blood from places you forgot you had.
But if cancer thought it was getting an easy win, it forgot who it was dealing with.
Erica Porter doesn’t just fight in rings. She fights in waiting rooms. In hospital gowns. In the long silences between scans. And if her body has scars, they’re just more proof that the war isn’t over—it’s just evolved.
She’d already survived Hollywood—a few blink-and-miss-it roles, like a strip club dancer in Skid Marks and a blink in Spider-Man as one of Bone Saw McGraw’s glamor girls. But she was never chasing fame. She was chasing meaning. And sometimes, meaning is a 1,300-day title reign in a company most people never paid enough attention to. Sometimes, meaning is making women’s wrestling feel real long before it was cool to do so.
Jungle Grrrl didn’t just play the part. She rewrote it.
A one-time WOW World Champion, a belt-holder in UPW and IZW, a pioneer in the jungle of underappreciated legends—Erica Porter didn’t get the mainstream spotlight. But she earned her name in bruises, blood, and battle cries.
She may be fighting a different war now, but make no mistake: the jungle still remembers her roar.
