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Women’s Britwres
A Look at EVE 154, “Mean Grrrls 2026”
When AEW’s biggest show of the year arrived in London, it was greeted by a parade of the best wrestling the UK has to offer. For Pro Wrestling EVE, this meant back-to-back weekends of action, a departure from the company’s typical first-Friday-of-the-month format. A special bonus edition of EVE was held two nights prior to All In, and Tony Khan was generous in helping fill out the lineup with plenty of his own talent. More than just token appearances, AEW ran the table at EVE 153, with several wrestlers assuming major roles on the show, including Kris Statlander, who kicked the night off by winning the EVE World Championship.
As exciting and validating as it was to have so much mainstream talent from the US involved with the UK’s only all-women’s promotion, a potential concern coming out of the show was whether the company could provide an equally impressive follow-up once all the borrowed talent returned to the States. The answer coming out of Mean Grrrls 2026 was an emphatic “No problem.”
The majority of the easily digestible two-and-a-half-hour show was used to promote an eight-woman match taking place next month. The winners from six of the seven scheduled bouts qualified for a “Clockwork Carnage” match in October, where the winner will be able to claim a shot at any EVE title. There will then be two additional “wildcards” added to the mix. This premise allowed the company to shift away from showcases featuring moonlighting talent and to dive deep into the established EVE roster.
Five former EVE champions appeared in matches on this show, along with a handful of wrestlers who either recently debuted or were making their first-ever appearance with the company. In the middle was a mix of recurring faces tasked with letting their in-ring storytelling do the talking. At the top of it all was a world-class main event featuring two former champions making their return to EVE this summer after embarking on careers in other parts of the world.
Kay Lee Ray
Kay Lee Ray was arguably the face of British women’s wrestling before her career wound through NXT UK and eventually to WWE. First using her established name before becoming more widely recognized as Alba Fyre, Ray has always been the type of wrestler who, even if you were unfamiliar with her resume, gave you the sense that it was impressive. And if you’ve only seen her perform in a shirt-and-tie ensemble as part of Chelsea Green’s Secret Hervice, it might shock you to see how fluidly she takes command of a big-match setting. Since returning to the UK in June, Ray has only gotten sharper and more comfortable in her native setting. This 16-minute match with Safire Reed was arguably the best she’s looked since coming home. It’s also become clear that she is sitting squarely in the prime of her career and approaching this return as anything but a novelty. The mantle Ray held at the top of the British scene nearly 10 years ago remains very much hers for the taking.
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Hyperactive
Safire Reed and Anita Vaughan have been attached at the hip since becoming a team in late 2024. In the fallout of their time together in the dominant RevPro faction known as the Cut Throat Collective, the two have made an impression on tag-team wrestling throughout the UK. It made all the sense in the world when the pair announced last spring that they would be embarking on a tour of Japan. Three months later, they declared themselves there to stay as an official part of the Sendai Girls roster. The journey to this point has been a testament to the dedication they have to their craft. Their social media offers a window into the duo’s passion, from selling T-shirts and even handmade sketches to videos showing the work they put into becoming fluent in Japanese.
Now it’s the UK receiving their presence as part of a tour. Reed and Vaughan returned to EVE in August, announcing they would remain home for three months before heading back to Japan. They have major matches announced for the fall, culminating in a showcase against AEW’s Brawling Birds in November before they depart.
Safire Reed briefly held the EVE Championship in 2023, and although she fit the part even at that early stage in her career, it’s amazing how much she has grown as a performer since then. Her impressive timing, fluidity, and repertoire were on full display in this match against Kay Lee Ray, and though things turned intense during the battle, it was only fitting that the two embraced by the end. The passing ships of two giants of the UK scene fit perfectly as the main event of a show rooted in homegrown talent.
Where Reed is known for her technical savvy, Anita Vaughan is the powerhouse of the team. It was in the midst of driving six hours multiple times a week across Ireland to Dublin’s Fight Factory that Vaughan developed her physical approach. After arriving in the UK, Vaughan quickly established herself as a tag specialist, teaming with her more seasoned fellow Irishwoman, Debbie Keitel, as The Gals. Keitel had previously teamed with the wrestler known today as Lyra Valkyria, winning the EVE Tag Team titles as the Woke Queens before the latter signed with WWE. Vaughan showed off her ever-evolving prowess in the early going of this show as part of a four-way match that also featured Alexxis Falcon.
Alexxis Falcon wins a four-way match
The Iron Queen, Alexxis Falcon, was the most dominant woman in the UK throughout 2026. For much of the year, she held the women’s championship in all three of the biggest independent wrestling companies in England outside of EVE – RevPro, Progress, and TNT Extreme. EVE seems to lean on Falcon’s biggest strength, that of an absolute heat-seeking missile, to carry multi-woman matches on most shows. She has had a couple of championship opportunities over the past year and a half, but the title has eluded her grasp. With championship victories under her belt this year alone over names like Mercedes Moné, Alex Windsor, and Rayne Leverkusen (NXT’s Lizzy Rain), it feels as though it’s only a matter of time before Falcon conquers the top of the card in EVE as well.
Her antics served as the glue that kept a wild four-way elimination match between Falcon, Vaughan, Violet Nyte, and Nahir Robles together. Vaughan looked excellent in this one and, though she ultimately took the fall that gave the match to Falcon, it came courtesy of a low blow behind the ref’s back.
Debuts
Nahir Robles is a Puerto Rican wrestler who’s been active primarily in the Northeastern US for the past three years. Her heritage is a huge part of her persona, along with her fun-loving disposition. She made the trip to the UK in August 2025 but was injured prior to performing for EVE. Her debut on this show was brief but noteworthy. She worked in some fiery offense in the opening portion of the match, delivering a Devil’s Kiss to Violet Nyte before taking a bow. Her electric smile, along with her repertoire, was enough to earn her an ovation from the audience after she was unceremoniously eliminated via roll-up at the hands of Alexxis Falcon.
Nixi XS is a Midwestern US wrestler out of St. Louis with whom fans of GCW and ROH may already be familiar. She’s not a high flyer or submission specialist, but she can certainly sell for her opponents. Couple that with her over-the-top character work, and you’ve got a fun, memorable performer. Besides, how often in 2026 do we get wrestlers from such outlandish locations as “the New York Fashion District in the year 2089?”
Lucy Sky
The beneficiary of XS’s otherworldly selling, Sky has been riding high throughout the UK of late. As each of the independent companies largely books within a vacuum, it doesn’t matter to the EVE universe that Sky recently won a number-one-contender’s match for RevPro’s British Women’s Championship and that she now has her sights set on Kanji. It doesn’t matter that her win percentage in TNT Extreme is putting her near the top of that division. What does matter, though, is that Sky was the winner of an absolutely brutal three-way match at EVE 153 along with Skye Blue and Emersyn Jayne, becoming the very first Spirit of EVE Champion.
Well, technically, Lucy Sky didn’t win that match, or the one on this show against Nixi XS. It was her alter ego, Lucy Deathmatch, handling those duties. She wrestles like a prizefighter in the mold of Kevin Owens with the powerful ground attack she developed training under Tom Prichard and Rip Rogers. At this stage, Sky appears on track to become the next big star on the Women’s Britwres scene, and after dominating Nixi XS, she’s one step closer to yet another EVE title shot.
The rest of the show
Matches not touched on here, but certainly worth a watch, include the opener, which saw Emersyn Jayne defeat Chantal Jordan; Molly Spartan pick up the win over Nightshade; Skye Smitson defeat former EVE champion Session Moth Martina; and an excellent tag-team match between two teams relatively new to EVE.
The Showstoppers (Melissa Fierce & Maddie Morgan) defeated Australia’s First Class Dolls in an excellent tag-team showcase. Fierce and Morgan have only been teaming for a short time, but they put themselves on the map when they took the current EVE tag champions, French Art, to a 20-minute draw earlier this summer. Morgan, in particular, demonstrated tremendous ring presence, particularly considering she’s only 19 years old.
As for the Aussies, they are the team of Aysha and Frankie B. Aysha, in particular, shows great awareness and believability and serves as the slightly more veteran presence on the team. The contest was originally scheduled to be a title match for the Showstoppers against the aforementioned French Art, but it was changed due to injury. First Class Dolls stepped in admirably, making their second appearance for the company, but hopefully with more to come in the future.
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