In the gaudy funhouse that is professional wrestling, where characters range from undead morticians to beer-swigging antiheroes, Wendy Choo—real name Karen Yu—somehow managed to carve out a persona that felt both absurd and oddly sincere: a sleep-deprived dream girl in a onesie, delivering suplexes between naps.
It sounds like a gimmick built to fail. And yet, for the better part of a decade, Yu hasn’t just survived the absurdity—she’s weaponized it. Her journey, a zigzag path from volleyball scholarships to casket matches, from the surreal plains of American Ninja Warrior-esque spectacle to the claustrophobic chaos of NXT’s parking lot attacks, is the stuff of underground folklore.
Before she was dropping elbows in flannel pajamas or terrorizing the ring as a thousand-year-old sorceress, Yu was teaching high school gym and coaching gymnastics in Queens. And before that, she was pounding volleyballs for Queens College and chasing degrees like they were tag titles. But make no mistake—Karen Yu was never meant to be average. She just took the long, weird road to prove it.
The Bronx to the Bump
Yu was born in the cold heart of New York City, raised in Bayside, Queens, where kids had grit or got swallowed by the noise. From an early age, she was on the move—gymnastics at five, a volleyball scholarship in her back pocket by 18, and degrees in both physical education and teaching. She taught by day. She coached. She motivated.
But somewhere in that structured, civilian life, the ring called.
And when it did, it came with punches and bumps and the kind of oddball opportunities that start with a folding chair and end with someone screaming into a steel post.
Yu found her way to Johnny Rodz’s grungy Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn—wrestling’s version of a dive bar piano school. Then she honed the rest under Damian Adams, grinding in Team Adams Pro Wrestling Academy, getting tossed and stretched in New Jersey gyms with broken heaters and broken promises.
By 2014, she had debuted on the indie scene under her real name. It was short-lived. Karen Q—a name part supervillain, part scholastic champion—emerged from the haze and started taking belts from the likes of Nikki Addams and Deonna Purrazzo. By 2017, she had won ECWA’s ChickFight Tournament, and in 2018, she stepped onto the biggest platform of her career to that point: Ring of Honor’s Final Battle.
WWE’s Wild Carousel: Karen Q, Mei Ying, and the Nap Heard Round the World
The WWE Performance Center doesn’t promise success. It promises a shot. And in 2018, Yu got hers. She joined the Mae Young Classic under the Karen Q moniker. But what followed was a stop-and-start WWE tenure worthy of its own three-act play.
Act I: Promise and Pain. In 2019, she teamed with Xia Li and gained momentum in NXT’s underbelly before disaster struck—a shattered lateral malleolus, the kind of injury that can end dreams or mutate them. She was out for nearly two years, spending more time with orthopedic surgeons than fans. Most fade away at this point. She didn’t.
Act II: The Smoke and the Sorcery. When Yu reemerged in 2020, she wasn’t Karen Q anymore. She was Mei Ying, a mythical matriarch of the Tian Sha faction—her face hidden behind kabuki-style paint, blowing mist and orchestrating beatdowns like a ghostly puppeteer. She barely wrestled. She mostly sat in shadowy rooms and breathed menacingly. The character was high concept and low return. It lasted a year before WWE shelved it.
Act III: The Nap Queen Rises. In late 2021, Yu transformed again—this time into Wendy Choo, a character that felt like a bet lost in a writer’s room: a onesie-wearing, sleepy-eyed wrestler who dozed off during interviews but suplexed people into oblivion. It shouldn’t have worked.
But wrestling has a weird affection for the bizarre. Choo connected. She had range, comedic timing, and a technical foundation that let her do more than just mug for the camera. Suddenly, fans were talking about her again. She and Dakota Kai made the Dusty Classic finals in 2022. She challenged for the NXT Women’s Championship. She suplexed Tiffany Stratton in a “Lights Out” match that was more brawl than bedtime story.
Then came the parking lot attack—scripted, of course, but effective. She disappeared from TV for months, only to return in 2024 with a darker edge. Less nap, more nightmare. Still Wendy Choo, but touched by madness.
The Evolve Chapter: Teddy Bears and Violence
By 2025, WWE funneled Choo into Evolve, their hybrid developmental-promotion-turned-playground for character weirdness. And Choo delivered—again. She debuted by handing Kylie Rae a teddy bear and a note like she was either starting a friendship or a horror movie.
They feuded in cryptic vignettes. She beat Rae, lost to Rae, then shared the ring with her in a fatal four-way elimination match to crown the first Evolve Women’s Champion. Choo didn’t win. But winning wasn’t the point.
She wasn’t chasing belts. She was chasing attention. And she kept getting it.
The Rosemary Feud: Horror, Pageantry, and a Casket
2025 brought Choo to TNA—Total Nonstop Action Wrestling. She teamed up with the supernatural Rosemary, and for a while, they looked like the underworld’s answer to Cagney & Lacey. But tag team harmony never lasts. After losing a title shot to Spitfire (Dani Luna and Jody Threat), Rosemary turned on Choo.
Their feud reached its finale with the first-ever women’s casket match on WWE programming. Choo lost. But again—look past the win-loss. Focus on the moment: the spectacle of a woman who once wore bunny slippers now closing the lid on one of wrestling’s strangest modern rivalries.
Character, Craft, and the Long Game
Underneath the glitter, gimmicks, and goofy sleep masks, Karen Yu is a technician. A wrestler’s wrestler. The Spring Roll submission. The armbar. The rear naked choke. She might look like a cartoon, but she moves like a killer.
She’s turned comedy into credibility. She’s walked through fire—literal injuries, botched characters, the burnout of wrestling’s developmental system—and kept adapting. It’s not easy to be taken seriously in a sport built on illusion, but Choo made her illusions real.
Even the absurd ones.
The Legacy of Wendy Choo
She’s not a household name. She might never headline WrestleMania. But for fans who appreciate depth, evolution, and the willingness to take creative risks, Wendy Choo is a cult classic—wrestling’s indie film darling in a landscape of superhero blockbusters.
She’s the sleeper hit that never stopped surprising.
And if you ask those who watched her grow—from Queens gymnasiums to NXT arenas—they’ll tell you the same thing:
She may have started tired.
But Karen Yu was always wide awake to the game.
