You never forget your first encounter with Kendall Ryann. For me, it happened in Ashland, Kentucky at the 2023 Bluegrass Wrestling Con. I noticed her looking at some of my books and gave her the quick pitch of what I do at Eat Sleep Wrestle: telling stories about pro wrestlers.
“I’ve got a story for you,” she said. “I’m the only trans wrestler in the tri-state area.”
I nodded. “That puts you in rare company.”
“Oh that’s not all!” she added. “I’m the only trans wrestler in the tri-state area who is also diabetic.”
Kendall knows how to make an impression. It’s something she learned from her mentor Bobby Blaze, and it’s served her well in out of the ring. It’s a big part of how she has become the “Hottest Topic” in the Florida wrestling scene.
Pro wrestling caught Kendall’s eye as a child. “The Hurricane was one of my favorites, Gregory Helms. I mean, who didn’t love the Hurricane? And watching him now, he’s so technically sound.”
Kendall also loved watching Low-Ki on TNA. “He was my favorite X Division star. I loved how he stomped people, how he screamed. His kicks are so similar to mine. When I moved to Florida, people asked me who I based my style on. I would tell them Low-Ki, and they would be like, ‘Brandon??’ Come to find out a lot of people train with him here, and they all know him by his shoot name.”
It’s no surprise, though, that her favorite was Trish Stratus. You can see it in the way she carries herself in the ring, in the woman she has become. Kendall wants to be an icon, just like her hero. She’s come a long, long way in pursuit of that goal.
Growing up in Teays Valley, West Virginia, Kendall Ryann always felt different. “I never hung out with boys. I always had the mindset of a girl. I remember seeing all the other kids growing big, and I wasn’t.”
Kendall was already seeing a specialist for her diabetes when she was referred to an endocrinologist. “That’s how I found out why I was smaller than the other kids. They told me I was born without testosterone. They gave me a couple of doses, just enough to start puberty. I did not like it. I felt really out of place in my body.”
Kendall attended college in the “big city” of Huntington, West Virginia, where she started to find her place in the city’s LBGT community. The thought of transitioning had only been a faint thought in the back of Kendall’s mind before college. She’d only heard of one trans-person in Teays Valley. Then a conversation with a friend and mentor named Erica helped Kendall find some direction.
“She asked me, ‘What are you?’ I said, ‘I’m straight.’ And she said. ‘You are. You’re a woman.’”
That epiphany led to a major decision for Kendall. She began taking steps to transition. It wasn’t until she was well into that journey when she had another life-changing conversation.
“My best friend asked me, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I want to be a wrestler!’ Through all my changes, pro wrestling was my constant. I dreamed of being a pro wrestler before anything else.”
Kendall began her training at Freddie Cornell’s Big Time Wrestling. “I met and trained with a lot of guys. “Nasty” Nate Gnarly was the first, but I also worked with Johnny Blast and “Superior” Tony Evans. Tony gave me my first suplex and broke my bobby pin. He still owes me a bobby pin!”
When special guest wrestlers came in to the school, Kendall took every opportunity to train with them.“I learned from guys like Johnny Santos, Kamikaze, Chris Taylor, and Vince Steele. Vince, may he rest in peace, was one of the first guys to pull me to the side and invest more time in me. I’m very grateful for the opportunities those guys gave me. They made me feel not like a beginner, but an up and comer.”
After a year with Big Time Wrestling, Kendall made the decision to change schools. She linked up with Bobby Blaze at the Art of Grappling school and FTC wrestling in Ironton, Ohio.
“I had all the basics when I got to Art of Grappling, but I learned so much from Bobby. He is so precise with all his students. He’s meticulous about your footwork, how you hit the ropes. I had happy feet before I worked with Bobby because I had never been taught that. I had also never called a match on the fly before Bobby. He taught me so much, and the more I work here in Florida, the more I realize how well he prepared me for everything.”
Bobby’s mentorship went beyond working in the ring. “There was a day I came in from work, all sweaty with my hair up, not even trying. Bobby called me to the side and said, ‘Kendall, come here. You’re a pretty girl. You tan. You fix yourself up. You ever thought about doing that all the time?’ I said, ‘What do you mean by that?’ He said, ‘You know. You should do that all the time. You should do your hair. Do your nails. Or something.’ It honestly was one of the best things he could have said to me. When you’re in wrestling, you always want into the room looking like money.”
Bobby wasn’t singling Kendall out with that message. It’s something he teaches all his students. “If you want to be a star, you have to present yourself as a star,” says Bobby. “When you walk in the door, you have to look and dress the part if you want to make an impression.”
“Bobby told what I needed to hear,” says Kendall. “He helped me become the woman I am today.”
Kendall was already thinking about moving on from FTC when she met Su Yung. They had a long conversation, and Kendall asked a lot of questions about the independent scene in Florida. She then spoke to Bobby Blaze, who spent time in Florida in his younger days training with The Great Malenko and his sons, Joe and Dean.
“She’s the same age I was when I went to Florida,” says Bobby. “She doesn’t have anyone else to worry about except herself. She said to me, ‘It’s a really big decision.’ I looked at her and said to her, ‘Really? All the choices you’ve made, you think this is a big decision? I think you’ve already made up your mind.’”
Things moved quickly once Kendall had Bobby’s blessing. Two weeks before uprooting her life, she told her mother. “I didn’t want to give her the chance to talk me out of of it,” Kendall laughs. She worked one final show for FTC, and after her match, she told the crowd she was leaving.
“I went from Huntington, West Virginia, one of the most LGBT-friendly cities in America, to the state of Florida, which is anti-almost everything. But I’ve been embraced here. I’m main eventing shows. By the end of my first year in Florida, I was ranked number eleven out of all the men and women in the state.”
Kendall’s rise in the Florida did not happen quickly. In fact, as soon as she arrived in Florida, she found herself jobbing out to almost everyone. “I called Bobby Blaze and told him how frustrated I was. He told me, ‘Kendall, you know you’re at the point you don’t have to do every job. You know your value!’”
Bobby’s words empowered Kendall to stand up for herself. “He taught me how to present myself as a professional and as a star. Once I started asserting myself, things began to change.”
Riot Pro Wrestling was one of the first promotions to take a real chance on Kendall. It’s become her home promotion in Florida. They gave her the chance not only to have spotlight matches with other women, but against men.
“I’ve had to fight tooth and nail to fight men, which is so crazy,” says Kendall. “When I first moved here, the promoters only wanted me to wrestle women. I want to wrestle the guys, too. I had to tell this one promoter to his face, ‘You know I was born a man, right?’”
One of Kendall’s first male opponents wasn’t keen on making her look good. “It was a first round match in a cruiserweight tournament. I got the feeling this guy didn’t want to make me look strong because I was a woman. He told me he wanted me to do a duck under and then take me down. I suggested after I duck under, I hit him with a big knee. When I ducked under, I hit those ropes like I was Kenny Omega and threw a pump knee as hard as I could. I nearly took his head off.”
After that moment, Kendall had everyone’s respect, from the locker room to the fans. “I worked three triple threats that night, making it all the way to the finals. I was so tired by the end of the night! It came down to me and this guy, and I told him, ‘Finish me.’ He hit me with a superkick, and I went down for the count. The crowd wanted me to kick out, but I was done.
“I knew, from my training with Bobby Blaze, it was the right call. The crowd was already up, and there was no point in kicking out and dragging things out. One of the veterans in the back told me, ‘You know what you’re doing. You did the right thing.’ It felt good to hear that.”
Kendall still likes to wrestle women, and does frequently, but she admits she likes wrestling the boys a bit more. “Some of these guys will lay into me. But I remind myself, this is what I wanted. And I’ll take it!”
Kendall had an explosive semi-main event with Jay Vidal, who has become one of her favorite opponents. “Jay’s cardio is unbelievable. We went fifteen minutes, and we were so rough. I had him up on my shoulders, and he told me to do a running cannonball into the corner. He was fine, but when I got up, I saw him wiping blood off his mouth. The crowd was going nuts because the girl made the guy bleed!”
One of the most memorable shows Kendall worked was for Kaiju Big Battle. “I show up with all my extensions and may makeup, and they hand me this giant Pokemon costume. And I’m like, ‘What do I do with this?’ I put the costume on, and I felt like my hands were bound together. My opponent was a big name you would know, and we were both like, ‘How are we supposed to wrestle?’ I pretty much learned that sometimes wrestling isn’t really wrestling. It’s two people doing three moves and hitting each other with cardboard skyscrapers because you can’t do anything more than that.”
It’s an experience she wouldn’t trade, but wouldn’t repeat. “I love watching Kaiju matches, but I’m not putting that costume on again!”
Moving to Florida was an eye opening experience in another surprising way. “One of the first shows I was on was at a bar. Some of the guys were buying me drinks and asking me, ‘What are you doing after?’ I said, ‘I’m going back to my room.’ They were like, ‘Alone?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.” And they said, ‘Want us to go up with you?’ It took me a minute to realize what was going on, but then it clicked. Oh wow. I’m a woman now! I was used to being treated like one of the boys back home. That was my awakening here!”
Kendall didn’t have to look far for community when she arrived in Florida. “Noah Veil is kind of the Madame of the LGBT community down here. After I moved to Florida, they reached out and told me, ‘You are now my child.’ I said, ‘Okay!’ I’ve learned that people in the LGBT community, in and out of wrestling, look out for each other. Noah would do anything for me, and I would do anything for them.”
The support of the LGBT community means a lot of Kendall, and she’s appreciative of all the people who made her journey possible. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without the LGBT community, and the drag community. All the rights they fought for. They paved the way for me in and out of wrestling.”
Kendall’s wrestling career continues to gather momentum. She scratched two items off her “to do” list in the fall of 2024. She appeared at Wrestlecade, and she wrestled on a TNA pay-per-view. But she hit a brief set back in January of 2025 when she broke her wrist. “I was expecting to take a boot to the face, but instead, my opponent threw a missile kick at my chest. I broke my wrist trying to brace myself, but I finished the match. It made me grateful for what Bobby Blaze taught me, being prepared for everything.”
Ryann found a silver lining in the time she was off. “I didn’t realize how much steam I built up here in Florida. I had a lot of people contact me to see if I was okay, including Jose Lothario, who trained Shawn Michaels. That was crazy!”
Kendall is eager to elevate her career in the months and years ahead. She’s commissioned custom gear from Italy. She’s hoping to work more with TNA. But she’s also eager to get back home to see Bobby Blaze and try out one of the new kids.
“I want to wrestle at the new FTC Arena, and I want Lifeguard Ross in the ring!” she says, speaking of Bobby’s 18-year-old wunderkind. “He reminds me a lot of me because he’s so all in with everything he does. I’m so proud of him.”
Bobby Blaze is looking forward to that reunion as well. “Kendall gives the best hugs!”