'I almost broke my neck': Singapore's first female pro-wrestler reveals the road and dangers to becoming a multi-champion

To mark International Women's Day on March 8, AsiaOne will be spotlighting inspiring women from different walks of life.

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Applying black and white make-up to her face, Singapore professional wrestling (pro-wrestling) champion Alexis Lee undergoes the process of transforming into her persona Skelly.

However, it is more than just a character, the 28-year-old tells AsiaOne that the Mexican skeleton art-inspired role helped make her a more confident performer in the ring.

"Skelly was taking away the mask that people wants me to be, so I got more comfortable in a ring.

"It's growth from when I started being pretty insecure to now where I'm more secure and confident," Alexis explains putting the finishing touches to her half-face war paint.

Standing tall as the first female pro-wrestler in Singapore, and current double title champion, you wouldn't know it just by looking at her "skinny" physique.

In pro-wrestling, sports entertainment is the goal with wrestlers adopting good (face) or bad (heel) personas to tell a story arc through the art of wrestling. Just imagine a soap opera, but with more physicality.

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Which is where Skelly comes in.

Alexis, who is a gym trainer in her day job, reveals that Skelly is also her way of "poking fun at people who make fun of her being so skinny" due to the fact that most wrestlers tend to be ripped and looking like bodybuilders.

But size clearly doesn't matter, when you got the talent.

Bringing Singapore wrestling to the world 

The current Singapore Pro Wrestling (SPW) Queen of Asia and Groom Championship Wrestling Entertainment Vixen Champion has brought Skelly to most, if not all, Southeast Asian nations featuring the likes of Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, India and extending to even Australia!

"I won a championship match on my debut match in in Australia," Alexis recalls when questioned on her overseas experiences.

She won the All Action Wrestling Women's championship in Perth back in 2017, before losing the following year to Australian wrestler Roxy Ryot.

She seems to have a soft spot for Perth having wrestled there four times over a period of six months, with the highlight coming at her Last Woman Standing title defence match against Roxy Ryot in January 2018.

While Alexis didn't managed to defend her title in that hardcore match which allowed the usage of 'weapons', she did introduce a distinct Singaporean flavour to it.

"For the Last Woman Standing match, they wanted to use what wrestlers will call the Singapore Cane - a kendo stick. 

"I was so annoyed, I'm like 'This is not a Singapore cane'. Let me get some rattan canes from Singapore and bring it over," she recounts with a grin.

Surprised that she wasn't stopped at the airport carrying the 'dangerous' rattan canes, Alexis confessed that she had "marks all over my body" after the hardcore match. Besides that, she also got slammed on a chair. Twice.

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During the course of her 10-year wrestling career, she has also faced the likes of international wrestling superstars Emi Sakura and Riho from All Elite Wrestling (AEW) and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)'s Indi Hartwell. 

Back in 2019, Alexis was invited to WWE's China tryouts with fellow Singapore wrestlers Andruew Tang and Dante Chen. Unfortunately, she was not selected for a contract with the popular American wrestling promotion. 

From wrestling fan to double champion

In a strange way, Alexis has come full circle with her pro-wrestling journey. 

Starting out as a WWE fan in the 2010s, she confessed that her interest in wrestling came about due to being bullied in Holy Innocents' High School. 

Having been drawn in by "all the drama" of the wrestling storylines, she could relate to the bitter rivalry between her favourite wrestlers like Mickie James' feud with Michelle McCool. 

"Michelle was super mean to Mickie, so I felt I was in her shoes - being bullied and teased in school,"

"That's one of the reasons that I fell in love with wrestling because of all these parallels with my life," shares Alexis. 

Even in secondary school, she couldn't resist trying out her favourite wrestling moves on her willing friends on her parents' bed. Which got a little awkward to explain when her mum walked in trying to pin a friend.

"I almost broke my neck doing flip bumps because you got to flip 270 degrees!"

In Republic Polytechnic, her friend invited her to a SPW show and the rest as they say is history.

Following the show, she had no qualms signing up for their wrestling tryouts at the tender age of 17 before taking training classes at 18 years old.

"I really love wrestling to that point that I don't care I'm the only girl. I'm just going like, try.

"Only a handful of us had the balls to take a bump in the ring. Which is not easy considering the sound, the impact, the feeling of it."

Not only did Alexis make her full debut with SPW, it's also where she had her proudest match as a wrestler.

Holding the prestigious SPW Tag Team titles with partner NYC back in 2021, the pair had to defend their gold against the Thai heavyweight duo of Paksa and Terry Diesel. 

She is particularly fond of the inter-gender match because she "got [her] a*% handed to [her] and everything looks so real" to the audience. 

"Some moves hurt, but it was all still safe. And more importantly, our (her's and her opponents') wrestling ideas just mesh," Alexis reveals.

So much so she feels that "the match was more fun than the title", which she claims was annoying due to the heavy weight of the Tag Team Championship belt and suffered from a faulty velcro strap.

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#MeToo movement in Singapore wrestling

With the #MeToo movement casting a global spotlight on rape culture, it shouldn't be a surprise that the social movement would have far reaching effects on the pro-wrestling industry.

In 2020, the Speaking Out movement started against emotional, physical and sexual abuse in the professional wrestling industry. In the US, several prominent wrestlers such as WWE stars Matt Riddles and Jack Gallagher were affected.

In Singapore though, Alexis informs us that there was a local wrestler that she called out.

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The local wrestler Alex Cuveas, who was with SPW, was eventually let go by the local wrestling promotion as female wrestlers from around the Southeast Asian region and even Germany called him out.

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She tells us that he sent her an inappropriate photo via text as well as behaving in suggestive manner in the locker room. 

"He sent me a d*&% pic [sic] for f*&* sake,

"He has rubbed his d^&% in front of me and I told him off. It's incredible for a guy who hasn't even made it into the top tier," exclaims a visibly disgusted Alexis.

Thankfully, that minor dark chapter in Singapore wrestling has changed things for the better. 

"It helped us remove some toxicity in the locker room, I feel there was so much egos that it was a bit of a hard reset."

Ever since, she mentions that she is more "heavily involved" in the SPW organisational meetings.

And besides that, she is now the 'big sister' of the locker room, doing all she can to protect her newer colleagues here and abroad.

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"I reached out to the Southeast Asia (wrestling) companies to check in on some of the girls. I felt responsible that I was not doing enough to protect them,

"If it happens to me, sure I can take it. But if it happens to them... So it sucks what some of them went through," says Alexis with a sigh.

Ultimately though, she feel that the Speaking Out movement is a good thing despite the pain: "Women are standing up and claiming their seat at the table. There is definitely still growth to be made, but still it's good progress. And that's worth celebrating."

And that's why she's the first female pro-wrestler in Singapore, and more importantly, a double champ!

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timothywee@asiaone.com

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