“I can’t stand her.”
The fan sitting in front of me is a regular at OVW and Grindhouse. He’s seen a lot of talent come and go over the years. Some great babyfaces. Some heat-seeking heels. Right now, he’s not having any of the woman in the ring holding court over all the men.
“It’s her voice, man,” he says. “It’s so… irritating.”
I smiled at his comment. “That’s exactly why she’s in there right now.”
It’s a safe bet none of the fans at OVW saw this coming. For the longest time Katie Gannon was nothing more than groupie who wore string bikinis and high heels, parading to and from the ring alongside Ryan Von Rockit (now simply known himself as Von Rockit). She never spoke on the microphone. She rarely, if ever, wrestled. But after vanishing from OVW for a few months, she returned with a whole new look and attitude.
She’s still dressing in heels, but she’s traded the bikinis for micro skirts, low cut blouses, and blazers. Her blonde hair is up in a bun, and she’s never without a clipboard. She talks all the time, and when she speaks, you can hardly hear her in Davis Arena for all the boos.
Katie Gannon is no longer a groupie. She’s management, part of the leadership of OVW’s latest heel faction, The Revolution.
And boy, do the fans hate her guts.
“She went from being arm candy to having more heat than anyone else in the locker room,” said OVW TV announcer Josh Ashcraft. “She’s the Dom Mysterio of OVW. And that’s exactly what we teach.”
The world of pro wrestling is still largely new to Gannon, who grew up in Albany, New York. A gifted athlete and self-described tomboy, Gannon tried softball, tennis, and basketball, before finding her niche as a fitness competitor, competing in both strongman and powerlifting competitions.
“I’m not that great of a team player. I’m kind of a lone wolf and an introvert. That’s why I liked fitness competitions. There’s no teamwork. Just me competing against myself.”
After relocating to Eastern Tennessee, where she still lives and works at a pharmacy, Gannon found herself bored and looking for something athletic to challenge her. “I’m the type where I have to do something. I can’t have a simple life. So my boyfriend at the time was like, ‘You’re a pretty girl. You’re athletic. You should try wrestling.’”
Gannon’s first taste of wrestling came with a backyard wrestling group nearby. She posted a few videos on Facebook, and from that, she was told she should seek out a wrestling school to be formally trained. That contact led her to Dr. Tom Pritchard’s school in Knoxville.
“I’m not gonna lie, it was hard,” says Gannon. “A lot harder than I expected it to be. I was new to wrestling, and I wasn’t familiar with like the language or, how you should act, which got me into trouble a lot in the beginning.”
It didn’t help Gannon that she was so new to wrestling. Most of her classmates had grown up watching wrestling and dreamed of nothing else. As a fitness competitor, Gannon was an outsider, and no one – not the coaches, not the students – made anything easy on her.
Gannon persevered, learning a great deal from Dr. Tom Pritchard and his staff. As athletic as she was, being in “ring shape” was a completely different ball game. The bumps and bruisers and minor injuries frustrated her as well. “It was the most challenging thing I’ve ever done, mentally or physically.”
Putting in the work paid off for Gannon. After getting to know Doug Basham, she started making the four hour drive every week to Louisville to train with him. She got a tryout, and in August of 2023 she made her OVW television debut, interrupting the wedding of Aaron Grider and Freya the Slaya.
The Grider-Freya relationship had been a brewing storyline for over a year. What started with a heel Freya seducing the nerdy ref Aaron Grider to gain an advantage over her opponents evolved into a full-on wedding angle. Grider and Freya made their way to the ring that night with four groomsmen, four bridesmaids, and a lovely wedding cake on a table, the perfect set up for a classic wrestling wedding fiasco.
“Here’s the thing about OVW,” says Katie Gannon. “You don’t know until about an hour before what you’re doing. That night Al came up to me and said, ‘You’re going to interrupt the wedding.’”
Gannon strolled into the ring with a microphone at just the right moment to object to the union between Aaron and Freya. She dropped a bombshell, telling everyone Aaron was already married to her. She was soon followed by another debuting diva named Crystal White, who also claimed to be a bride of Grider.
The wedding was a shambles. Freya chokeslammed her two-timing groom through the cake and the table. And Katie Gannon earned high marks for her debut. “I hate to say it,” she says, “But I’m pretty good at being obnoxious.”
Almost immediately, Katie and Crystal White began making appearances with Von Rockit. In their role as groupies, they’d strut to the ring wearing heels and next to nothing else, cheering Von Rockit from the ring apron while wearing his signature hat and taking care of his guitars. It was very old school booking for the two fitness models, and Gannon admits she was not a fan of the groupie gimmick.
On the other hand, she found a kindred spirit in Crystal White, a fitness model and pro wrestler from Chicago. “I don’t have many female friends because girls are so catty and competitive. But Crystal is a really awesome person. She’s a lot like me, and we really vibed together. If I had something wrong with my hair, she’d fix it. If I had a rip in my outfit, she’d sew it. She’s genuinely supportive.”
Gannon praises Von Rockit as well, for his encouragement and creativity. “I don’t know how he does it, but he’s such a character. He can pull things to say out of his butt and make it work. He’s really good at that. It was a great opportunity. I just never liked wearing next to nothing.”
After taking some time off for a hernia operation, Gannon was ready to come back. The storylines at OVW had evolved, and a new heel faction led by Doug Basham, The Revolution, was taking over. “I knew they had a role for me coming back,” she says. “But I didn’t know how significant it would be. So my first day back, they threw me out there and I was like, wow, I’m the HBIC – head bitch in charge. And I loved it.”
Women as heel authority figures are nothing new in pro wrestling. In her younger days, the WWE’s Stephanie McMahon thrived as the shrill-voiced, obnoxious woman in charge. What set Gannon apart right from the start was her voice. She’s not a soprano, and she’d not shrill. She’s an alto with a growling menace that feels very different. As I noted at the top, it works very well for her.
“They teach us that our characters should be who we are, just turned up, and it’s true. I’m not that obnoxious all the time, but if you get me pissed off, I can go from zero to a hundred quick. That’s Katie turned up. Plus, I like doing things to push people’s buttons.”
As for her voice, Katie admits she herself is not a fan of how she sounds. “Every time I hear myself, I think, oh my gosh, I sound so obnoxious. I know it’s the character, but I also think I can probably do more with it. And I want to work on that.”
Eric Cornish, OVW’s ring announcer, marveled at what he saw when Gannon returned. “Her role in the past was the blonde bombshell making an early exit from the Nightmare Rumble or shaking what her mama gave her. It wasn’t until she was given the mic on one episode of RISE that her true talent shined. Who knew she had talent to make people hate her with just the sound of her voice?”
“I was pleasantly surprised at how great she was in that character,” said Doug Basham. “Katie is so quiet and so sweet in the back. But she walked through the curtain, stepped into the lights, and picked up that mic, and I thought, ‘Who the hell is this??’”
Basham has truly enjoyed watching Gannon thrive in the spotlight. “I told her, when I have the mic, take it from me, say whatever you want. And she does. She’s got real heat, and it’s not because she’s standing next to me. Being a character is truly her super power.”
As good as she is at being bad, Gannon does struggle at times with the things fans day. The feedback from backstage is positive, but she’s getting used to the negativity from fans, both in the Arena and on social media. “I’m a lot better about it, but like when you first come back and you’re just hit with all these negative comments, it’s challenging.”
Working at OVW has perks that other independent promotions and wrestling schools cannot offer. Beginning in January of 2024, the OVW crew had the opportunity to work alongside WWE legend Mick Foley. Gannon struck up a friendship with the hardcore legend immediately, and when she saw him struggling to climb in the ring, that friendship took on a new dimension.
While she didn’t know much about Foley’s Hall of Fame career, she could see his weight was a real problem. “He told me he wanted to lose weight, and I told him, ‘I’m a pharmacist. I can help you.’”
Gannon talked to Foley about the new weight loss drugs starting to take hold, and she helped him to choose a course of treatment. Gannon and Foley kept in touch, and a year after his debut at the Nightmare Rumble, Foley returned a hundred pounds lighter, moving better than he had in years.
Mick returned to feud with “The Veteran” Jack Vaughn and put over another young lady on the roster, Sophia Rose. But Gannon was thrown into the storyline as well so that Foley could thank her publicly – but still in character – for the difference she’d made in his life.
“The person behind Miss Gannon is hard to hate,” says Eric Cornish, who has had plenty of on-camera confrontations with her. “Despite the pinup looks and screeching voice, Katie is someone that works hard to perfect her craft, and is willing to take any piece of advice she’s given.”
Katie Gannon is as driven as anyone at OVW and has big aspirations for the future. She’s also a private person who prefers to keep those goals close to the chest. Despite all she’s achieved in the ring as co-leader of The Revolution, she’s still the introvert, the lone wolf. “I’m still pretty shy, but I’m struggling to come out of my shell.”
For now, she’s grateful for the opportunities Doug Basham and Al Snow have given her, and she’s happy to be a part of OVW.
“Big things are going to happen here, and I think that OVW is really going to have an expanded role of the future. So just stay tuned.”
Top photo courtesy Katie Gannon.