At first Judi-Rae Hendrix never paid much attention to professional wrestling. It was on all the time, thanks to her brothers, but she never paid attention until the day her brother said, “Hey, there’s girls wrestling!”
“What do you mean there’s girls wrestling?” she said.
Even though she was a tomboy, wrestling was too much of a boy thing for her. Then she discovered A.J. Lee. “She was in a tag with Tamina and someone else again Natalya and the Funkadactyls,” Hendrix recalls. “I was like, holy cow! This girl reminded me so much of myself. The way she wrestled, the way she presented herself, she was everything I wanted to be.”
Judi-Rae started looking up more wrestling and specifically, more ladies wrestling. She learned about other ladies who worked the squared circle, and she wanted to see them all. At the age of eleven she had found her thing. She was hooked.
Just a few years later she took an interests test in middle school to help her identify potential career options. “Mine came back as professional athlete/ actor/ stunt person. I thought to myself, professional athlete. Professional wrestler! Oh yeah! I could do it! I’ve had my heart set since that day.”
As enthusiastic as she was, her parents did not accept Judi-Rae’s career choice. “They said, ‘You want to do what now? No, no, no. Go to college and get a real job. Be a doctor or be a teacher. Then if you want you can train.’ I didn’t want to be a doctor because I don’t like being around sick people, and I didn’t want to be a teacher because children talk.” Thankfully, Mom and Dad saw her passion and struck a bargain. If she paid for wrestling school and also agreed to go to college, she could train. “The same week I turned in my high school cheerleading uniform, I started training.”
Judi-Rae has trained relentlessly since that day. She started out with Chris Cannon and Shane Douglas, and she moved on to train with Bobby Blaze and Jillian Hall. She’s also taken seminars with other legends like Ricky Morton, Mr. Hughes, and Jimmy Valiant. When we met, she purchased a copy of Tracy Smothers’ book and told me she had been signed up for a seminar before he passed away. The girl knows and loves her history!
Hendrix is a true student of wrestling. She’s a sponge soaking up every bit of knowledge she can get, from the history of the business to the psychology of building a match. “Shane Douglas didn’t just show us how to do things but why we do them. Bobby and Jillian made my ring psychology even sharper, and in doing so, they helped me clean up my ring work. Working with them made a lot of the lessons I’d learned elsewhere click.”
Hendrix is only a year and a half into her wrestling journey, but she carries herself in the ring with the confidence of a a true professional. She stunned the regular Girl Fight fans back in June by not only working the main event against champion Billie Starkz, but hanging with her the entire time. I spoke with Bobby Blaze after the match about her, and Blaze was thrilled to hear his star pupil had done so well. “I’m looking for her to do good things in her future with the business,” he told me.
Based out of Eastern Kentucky, Hendrix has done most of her work in the West Virginia area but is looking to expand. When I met her in June, she was griping over the application she had to fill out to wrestle in Kentucky. “You want to know why you need to fill that out?” said her Dad. “The reason is right behind you.” He pointed to Girl Fight promoter Mad Man Pondo and laughed. (Read Pondo’s book if you don’t know about Kentucky’s Pondo/ Rotten rules.)
Hendrix has worked a number of matches with West Virginia’s Killjoy Kolbe Max, and she loves working against OVW’s Women’s Champ Hollywood Haley J. Long term she wants to wrestling in Japan and the WWE, but in the immediate future, she’s hoping to have more matches with Haley J and Billie Starkz. She also wants to work with Kenzie Page, and she’s gunning for her trainer Jillian Hall. “It’s gonna happen sooner or later, and I swear I’m gonna beat her!”
Judi-Rae Hendrix is one of the people I love rooting for in the wrestling business. She is bright, engaging, and fun, and her talent is only exceeded by her heart. She’s also driven by something deeper than just a love of wrestling that goes far back into her life story.
“I was an adopted child, and I suffered all kinds of abuse in my early years. My birth mom was special needs and never got to do the things she wanted to do. She’s passed away now, but knowing her story fires me up to live the life my mom didn’t get to.”
Like Bobby Blaze, I want to see Judi-Rae make it big in the business. One you see her in the ring, you’ll feel the same way.
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