Living in 2026 can be rough. It seems as if every day a new horror awaits our eyes. Some days, it can be really hard to keep getting up and giving the world an honest chance. This goes doubly so if you work in a public-facing direction, such as retail or food service, where a veneer of politeness is expected at all times. Many of us go into work every day feeling like the weight of the world is on our shoulders, and are expected to be a ray of sunshine for people who are dealing with the same anxieties you are. The emotional whiplash of reading the news, seeing some new terrible thing happening, then having to go be happy, as if you aren’t perilously close to snapping under the pressure, can be impossible to navigate.
When I start to feel like this, I just remember: Nothing matters. Smile anyway.
This project is the culmination of spending most of my life obsessed with pro wrestling. It’s difficult to pare down 40 years of fandom to 40 acts, especially when you’ve consumed as much wrestling from different places as I have. I have to be judicious with my choices because I simply don’t have the time to cover every wrestler who meant something special to me. That said, most of my list will be people who affected me in my youth, or at least those who are likely at the peak or later stages of their careers. Willow Nightingale is one of only three people on this list younger than me, and the only one I am confident has her best days ahead, despite already being so talented and accomplished.
Willow Nightingale embodies a quality I see in so many of my millennial peers, especially those I most closely associate with: a seemingly existential dread that she chooses to combat with kindness and love, taking sorrow and forcing us to see joy.
Her aesthetic reads like Lisa Frank at a seedy punk show in a dive bar. Even her stylized logo plays into this, with “Willow” in bright colors with stars and hearts, while “Nightingale” appears in a classic death-metal band font. This combination of cute and brutal is one that many of us have adopted in adulthood. The folks with colorful hair, multiple piercings, and tattoos are often the softest, most caring people you will ever meet. Sweetness and darkness living alongside each other in harmony is the calling card of our generation, and Willow personifies that our smiles are not rooted in naivete, but earned through the trials we have faced.
Her nickname, “Babe with the Power,” is apt, as she has the size and strength that many of her opponents can’t match. Even the name is special to me: Willow was my favorite character on ’90s TV classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I would eventually bestow that name on a cat when I was 19, she is still around almost 20 years later. Though she’s not in my home, she’s with people who love her and treat her like the queen she is.
The independent scene of the late 2010s was coming off a peak a few years earlier, and while opportunities existed, they always come in smaller doses for women, especially Black women. Over the years, I’ve seen so many talented acts with “potential” who never rose above that station in the business. Potential is excellent in your 20s, but eventually it must transform into something undeniable, especially with race and gender unfortunately working against you. The indie scene is littered with people who were “next” but stalled out and never made the leap necessary to become among the best in the world.
I first saw Willow Nightingale as part of her team with Solo Darling, “The Bird and the Bee,” in Chikara in 2019, and she immediately caught my attention. Her work in the ring was already coming together; she was powerful and held her own in matches against women and some men. Her look was there too, with that particularly charming blend of optimistic nihilism at the forefront of her presentation, a force of nature, but also of good. Like a hurricane that rains down hugs. She was someone I knew would be worth keeping an eye on, but unfortunately, COVID put us all in stasis for a while.
When wrestling returned in late 2020 and into 2021, Willow emerged ready to take on the world and prove her place among the biggest names on the independent scene. She appeared in most of the major independent promotions across the country, including Ring of Honor (just before it was bought by Tony Khan) and some AEW Dark episodes, doing job duty for established stars.
This hard work paid off in the coming years, as she would eventually sign an AEW contract and achieve the recognition that so many independent wrestlers dream of. Her grinding had finally paid off, but she was just beginning to show us what she was capable of.
She would spend the next years traveling the world: Japan, Mexico, Europe, and across the United States. In the ring, she faced all kinds of competition, which helped foster a meteoric rise into the force of nature on our TV screens most weeks.
This was the era that truly became a revelation to me. Willow played all kinds of roles: scrappy underdog against established legends, big TV star guiding younger talent, dominating monster dismantling the lesser woman before her, or a young prospect ready to show the whole world just how great she could be.
Her 2022 match against Mia Yim for Prestige Wrestling was one of my favorite underrated matches that year. Mia, recently fired by WWE, returned to the independent scene with a chip on her shoulder, looking to prove the world wrong. Willow, at that time booked occasionally by AEW, and Ring of Honor, put on a clinic that made fans and skeptics alike pay attention. Using her size and power to dominate, Willow faced Mia’s ingenuity head-on. In the end, Mia won, but Willow showed the world she couldn’t be stopped for much longer.
It can’t be understated how important times like these are to a wrestler’s development. Working against different people, styles, and skill levels is the best way to improve your mechanics inside the ring. It also forces creativity in structuring a match, since you never know how a crowd will react on any given night, anywhere in the world.
There’s something special about this portion of every wrestler’s career, where they seem to jump into another stratosphere—from “good” to “one of the best.” It’s why I love independent wrestling. So many people flirt with greatness but lose what made them special or never get the chance to hang with the best. Good is often the enemy of great, and far too many stall at simply being good because life intervenes. Willow got over that hump, proving she belonged on everybody’s lists. Seeing someone with potential become something more is rare, and therefore sweeter.
It’s like when a band you discover on Bandcamp suddenly plays the big festivals and lands a spot on Conan. We see early potential, and when it’s realized and surpassed, it feels like we were, in some small way, part of that success. When you’re a fan, their failures hurt worse, but their successes are that much sweeter. Willow was no longer a well-kept secret or the “next up”, she was the best and most entertaining woman in professional wrestling.
This is where I reveal my inherent bias: I can’t see Willow without thinking of a powerful, beautiful, alternative Black woman—my wife. So much so that I timed this article around her birthday. I know I’m reading parts of my own life into Willow, but that doesn’t lessen the truth of what she inspires in me. What is fandom, and what are heroes, if not people who shape your life choices and the way you see the world? While I was initially struck by the physical similarities, the core is much deeper than skin.
I first met my wife nearly 21 years ago, and the attraction was immediate, so immediate that I pursued her while I still had a girlfriend. That turned out poorly, and a couple of months later, I had no girlfriend, and I was persona non grata to my future beloved. Six years later, through a mutual friend, we reconnected, and the spark was still there. It immediately felt like the six years apart had been the biggest mistake of my life.
Within months we were officially dating, and I knew I had found my person. Her intellect, wit, beauty, and heart were no match for my cynicism and self-doubt. She made me a better person, more compassionate, more aware, and more willing to give and receive love.
I spent my life being told that marriage was hard work, but it turns out that when you like your partner (not just love them, but actually like them), it’s one of the easiest things in the world. The world outside our four walls can throw anything at us, but inside is always easy because we have each other. It’s always us against the world. A tag team for the ages, a partnership no manager or interference can break. Ricky and Robert could never have what we have (Hangman and Swerve could come close though)
The physical similarities between my wife and Willow were the first thing I noticed, but her personality is what truly made her one of my favorites. Her bright smile reminds me of my wife’s laugh, which is forever etched in my brain. Her friendships, with frenemy Kris Statlander and adorable lap dog Harley Cameron, mirror my wife’s amazing ability to be friendly to everyone, even people she may not like, and to drop everything to help those she loves.
Her feats of strength and power remind me of my wife (a competitive powerlifter!) pushing herself to lift heavier while maintaining joy in her sport. Most importantly, her bubbly demeanor reminds me not to let the world defeat me. Through it all, Willow has helped us both keep smiling, even when it seems impossible.
There’s something so inspiring about someone who chooses joy in the face of sadness, anger, and hatred. People our age seem to endure a new “worst thing ever” every few years, and yet we persist. Millennials should be drowning in despair over the state of the world, and yet some of us keep going. Willow is the avatar for that persistence in my eyes. She is the kind of person I want to be more like—someone who chooses to see the good even when it’s harder and harder. She implores us to “find whatever shreds of joy and hope we can to keep going and get each other through the day,” and that’s something I haven’t done enough, but Willow makes me want to be better.
Even in the smallest moments, Willow’s philosophy shows up. When getting out of bed feels Herculean, or going to work feels like it may drain the last of your sanity, choosing to smile instead of getting frustrated is a quiet act of defiance. Sometimes it’s as simple as answering a friend’s text when you don’t feel like it, or laughing at something that went wrong instead of letting it ruin your day. She reminds us that joy isn’t something that happens to you, it’s something you carry forward, even when it seems impossible. Maybe that’s what fandom, at its best, really is: finding sparks of hope in someone else’s light, letting it guide how we live our own lives, and passing that light to others along the way.
Nothing matters. Smile anyway.
Raised By the Ring 