In a business built on entrance music, pyro, and unforgettable exits, Terri Poch—better known to wrestling fans as Tori—might be remembered most for the way she disappeared. Not in some tragic, cautionary tale sense. No, Tori slipped out the side door like someone who’d seen the smoke and mirrors up close, realized it wasn’t magic, and decided to go find peace on a yoga mat.
Before the black bodysuits, the unhinged jealous angles, or Kane growling monosyllables about his “girlfriend,” Terri was a fitness model built like a brick Pilates studio—an early adopter of the glute bridge and someone who looked like she could hip toss most of the locker room. Born August 20, 1964, in Portland, Oregon, she debuted as “Taylor Made” in Pacific Northwest Wrestling back in 1988, valet to Scotty the Body—yes, that Scotty, who’d eventually become ECW’s Raven. The irony is almost poetic.
But it wasn’t until the LPWA—Ladies Professional Wrestling Association—that Terri, now under the ring name Terri Power, began slamming her way into the history books. Beating legends like Leilani Kai and Judy Martin, she had the look, the engine, and the kind of quiet intensity that could make you believe she just might snap your femur if you looked at her funny. In 1992, she defeated the mysterious Lady X for the LPWA title. No big promo. No champagne. Just hard work and another victory added to a ledger that most folks never bothered to read.
When the LPWA folded—because of course it did—Terri took her boots and headed to Japan. You don’t take that kind of beating for nothing. She finished ninth in the grueling Japan Grand Prix and even tagged with Kyoko Inoue. But eventually, her body needed a break and so did her mind. She disappeared in 1993.
Flash forward to 1998. The World Wrestling Federation was in full Attitude Era swing: swearing, sex, and steel chairs. And that’s when Terri re-emerged—not as Terri Power, but as a trembling, rose-holding fan of Sable. It was a bizarre character pivot that made as much sense as putting George Carlin in a Teletubbies reboot. But this was Vince McMahon’s WWF—a place where “weird” was often mistaken for “edgy.”
As Tori, she stalked Sable like a hormonal teenager who’d binged too many Basic Instinct reruns. She handed her flowers, lingered ringside, and took verbal lashings like she was paying by the insult. It was degrading, uncomfortable, and oddly captivating—like watching a soap opera through a cracked windshield. Sable treated her like trash, then beat her at WrestleMania XV with help from bodybuilder-turned-bouncer Nicole Bass. It was the worst kind of fan service—one that ended in a loss and a face full of makeup smudges.
But then, something changed. Tori started wrestling. Really wrestling. She traded bumps with Jacqueline, Ivory, and Luna Vachon—not exactly a cupcake division. She even took part in the first-ever women’s Hardcore match, where Ivory smashed a mirror over her head and tried to iron her face like a wrinkled suit jacket. If there were Frequent Suffering Points, Tori had a lifetime membership.
In storyline terms, things only got weirder. Tori was paired up with Kane—yes, the 7-foot demon dentist turned fire-summoning pyromaniac—and was suddenly cast as the tormented damsel who turned paranoid, then manipulative, then psychotic. You couldn’t tell if she needed a therapist or an exorcist.
The psychology was Shakespearean if you watched it through a broken beer bottle. She cried assault after a hug from Test, manipulated Kane into beating up half the locker room, and even helped Stephanie McMahon win the Women’s Championship with a DDT so stiff it should’ve come with a chiropractor’s bill.
Then came the swerve—a 180-degree heel turn straight out of a writer’s room full of empty Red Bull cans. Tori joined D-Generation X. You read that right. The same woman who entered as a nervous rose-giver was now crotch-chopping with X-Pac and Road Dogg. She even took a powerbomb through a table at King of the Ring from Bubba Ray Dudley because… of course she did.
And then—poof.
An injury. Torn labrum. Dr. James Andrews. You know the script. She returned briefly as “The Black Ninja,” a masked assassin helping Raven retain the Hardcore Title. But even that angle was unmasked and discarded like last week’s creative meeting notes. By March 2001, her WWF run had quietly ended—no retirement match, no farewell promo, not even a kayfabe funeral.
She trained rookies on Tough Enough for a cup of coffee, then faded into the periphery, allegedly after backstage heat with Raven, which was denied more times than Heenan ducking an IRS bill. In September 2001, she was released.
But here’s the kicker. Terri Poch didn’t implode. She didn’t spiral into addiction or tabloid hell. She reinvented herself—again. This time not with a gimmick or a costume, but with purpose. She became a yogini. A real one. Not some Instagram influencer stretching for clout. A teacher. A business owner. A woman who swapped steel chairs for serenity.
She never got the send-off. When DX was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, there was no mention of her. No flashback. No photo package. Just silence. That’s the wrestling business—it chews the scenery and the players. It remembers who it wants and quietly ghosts the rest.
But you can’t erase what Tori did.
She took every weird storyline, every awkward segment, every bump and booking twist, and she leaned into it. She sold it. She suffered it. And somehow, she made it all feel a little too real—because maybe it was. She was a mirror to the madness of the Attitude Era. She was both a vessel and a victim. And when the lights dimmed, she left under her own power—without needing to be carried out on a stretcher or a storyline.
Today, somewhere in Portland, Terri Poch teaches yoga with a quiet fire most never notice. But if you look close, maybe there’s still a spark of that ring general. Maybe there’s still a little Tori in those poses. And maybe, just maybe, she’s finally found the peace that Vince and his parade of carnies never could give her.
