Some legends are written in gold leaf. Others are carved into barn wood, soaked in sweat, mascara, and middle fingers. Traci Brooks is the latter. The woman who started on a pig and chicken farm in St. Marys, Ontario, and ended up a Hall of Famer didn’t get there on luck or legacy. She clawed her way to relevance, scraping her name into the DNA of TNA Wrestling like graffiti on a gas station bathroom mirror—unapologetic, gritty, permanent.
She wasn’t built in a performance center or polished on social media. She was molded in sawdust and spotlight. A product of Ron Hutchison’s Sully’s Gym in Toronto, where the walls smelled like mildew and ambition, and every bump felt like a mortgage payment on your spine. By the time she debuted in 2001 as “Tracy Brooks,” she’d already figured out wrestling wasn’t going to give her anything for free.
It didn’t. It never did.
Before TNA, she bounced around the independents, working for Border City Wrestling and the AWF. She even wrestled men—back when intergender matches weren’t hashtags, they were suicide missions. In 2001, she won the AWF Heavyweight Championship as “Miss Apocalypse,” a name that sounded like a punchline until she made it gospel with a suplex and a sneer. The Toronto Sun called her Miss June 2000. The rest of us called her dangerous.
But it was in TNA—Total Nonstop Action Wrestling—where Traci Brooks planted her flag and set the tone. She debuted in 2003 dressed like a Catholic schoolgirl with a mean streak, swinging fists and attitude in a world still figuring out what to do with women who didn’t just look good—they hit hard too.
They called her the “Original Knockout.” Not because she was the first woman signed, but because she was the first to fight like she didn’t need permission.
She managed, she wrestled, she refereed, and at times she did all three in the same damn night. Whether it was the chaos of Bitchslap, the sleaze of managing Michael Shane and Kazarian as part of “The New Franchise,” or the uncomfortable heat of working for Robert Roode as the abused Ms. Brooks, she did it all with a kind of theatrical snarl that made you believe this wasn’t just performance—it was catharsis.
Her run with Roode was something out of a noir novel: beauty, power, manipulation, and pain dressed up as storyline. But Traci played it with such realism you wondered where the kayfabe ended and the real bruises began. When the company turned her into Roode’s corporate punching bag—Ms. Brooks, executive assistant—she didn’t flinch. She just kept showing up, making the segment mean something, knowing full well that a camera lens doesn’t care how tired you are.
But Brooks was never just a prop. She was the glue. While the Knockouts division exploded into existence with the Gail Kims and the Awesome Kongs, Traci was already there, dragging the women’s division behind her like a rusted pickup truck full of bad booking decisions and broken promises. She fought through it all.
She was the first “Knockout Law,” the boss before they even knew they needed one. A mix of on-screen authority and off-screen example. She had Erb’s palsy in her right arm—she called it her “uniceps” because the bicep and tricep never formed. But she didn’t let that stop her. She worked harder. She lifted awkward. She improvised. She adapted. That arm became her brand—a reminder that toughness isn’t about muscle, it’s about will.
She posed for Playboy in 2009, the first Knockout to do so, but the spread never hit the magazine’s pages. Instead, it was released online, buried under the algorithm. Typical. Even when she broke barriers, the system muffled the noise. But Traci didn’t need a centerfold to be remembered. She needed a microphone, a ring, and one more segment.
Over the years, she worked with everybody—Chris Sabin, Christy Hemme, Payton Banks, even Karen Jarrett. She lost more than she won. She jobbed. She got written off. She came back. She disappeared. She came back again. Always ready, never bitter.
She retired quietly in 2015, managing her husband, Frankie Kazarian, to a victory in House of Hardcore. It was a fitting end—no pyro, no ceremony, just the woman who made being a Knockout mean something standing ringside in boots that had seen more heartbreak than most careers.
And then, in 2023, they gave her flowers.
At Bound for Glory, Traci Brooks was inducted into the Impact Hall of Fame. The woman who built the Knockouts division with nothing but stubbornness and a half-dead right arm finally got the standing ovation she’d earned two decades prior. She stood beside Kazarian, her real-life partner, and finally got to hear her name screamed without an asterisk.
There’s poetry in that.
These days, Brooks pops up once in a while. She slapped Maria Kanellis at Slammiversary 2022. Clotheslined Alisha Edwards in 2023. She still hits hard, still looks the part, still gives a damn. But she doesn’t need the spotlight anymore. It follows her whether she wants it or not.
Because Traci Brooks wasn’t just a Knockout.
She was the blueprint.
She was the woman you called when no one else wanted to bleed for the business.
She was the farm girl from Ontario who walked into the carnival of pro wrestling and refused to leave until they etched her name into the rafters.
And when they finally did?
She just smiled.
Lit a cigarette.
And whispered: “Took you long enough.”
