Blake Monroe's Stunning Evolution From Mariah May To WWE Star

"The Glamour," Blake Monroe, has had a very unique journey to WWE, from starting as an influencer for WWE Shop, to making her name in Japan's Stardom after start-stop career beginnings due to the pandemic, to a glory blood fest known as The Hollywood Ending match in the company's biggest competition, All Elite Wrestling. Monroe, who used to go by the ring name Mariah May before her shocking debut on "WWE NXT" back in June, has never stopped chasing her dream of becoming a WWE superstar.

The young star from London, England, isn't just a pretty face with impressive mic skills. Over the course of just over six years, she has gained experience not just in major companies like AEW, WWE, and Stardom, but across various independent promotions as well, such as TNT Extreme Wrestling, RevPro, where she held their Undisputed Women's Championship, Battleground Championship Wrestling, Combat Zone Wrestling, Texas Style Wrestling, and many more. Monroe was an experienced star even before making her in-ring debut in Tony Khan's company in January 2024.

While "The Woman From Hell" has mostly worked as a heel during her time in American promotions, she's used her influencer skills from back in her WWE Shop days to connect well with fans online as her friendly, bubbly, real self. Monroe worked to get her name out there initially with a Twitch Channel, even becoming a partner on the site, where she'd play videogames like Animal Crossing while chatting with fans. These days, Monroe connects with fans and shares her story and WWE journey in vlogs on her YouTube channel.

Whether she was eviscerating women on the microphone while holding the AEW Women's World Championship, or buddying up to powerhouse Jordynne Grace to get her way in "NXT," "The Glamour" is a force to be reckoned with, and as her history in the business shows, she's not about to stop anytime soon.

Monroe started as a WWE Shop influencer back in 2017. She'd model clothing, mostly t-shirts, with branding of stars like Nikki Bella, Alexa Bliss, AJ Styles, Trish Stratus, and D-Generation X. The photos would be used on the shop's website to help sell the products to fans, and Monroe would also post them to her own social media, mostly on Instagram. Monroe had been a lifelong fan of WWE, even prior to getting the influencer gig. She would often post about the company and its shows. Her old posts on X (then known as Twitter) began to resurface once she signed with the company. In one tweet in 2016, Monroe joked that WWE was going to London to give her a contract.

With those WWE dreams in mind, in 2018, she began ring announcing and worked multiple shows throughout the year. She made her in-ring debut, a loss, as Mariah May against Nina Samuels, in February 2019. She also appeared at Progress Wrestling's Chapter 89 show that May as a fitness instructor character named Mariah Eagan. Monroe tried out for WWE in June 2019 in front of coaches like William Regal and Sarah Stock, over the course of three days at the UK WWE Performance Center in Enfield, a town in north London, but was unsuccessful. 

One of Monroe's final appearances on the professional wrestling scene before pandemic closures hit the world came in the main event of United Wrestling UK's I Can Do This All Day in February 2020. Monroe defeated five other women for the United Wrestling Championship, the first gold of her career. Monroe had the biggest win of her career thus far right before the world shut down, with restrictions being much stricter in her part of the world and on the independent scene. 

When the world began to emerge from pandemic lockdowns, Monroe got back to work as well. She returned to the professional wrestling world alongside Zoe Lucas as a tag team known as the Dream Dollz in June 2021 at TNT Extreme Wrestling. The pair also worked at Revolution Pro Wrestling, or RevPro. Monroe feuded with Gisele Shaw for the RevPro Undisputed Women's' Championship.

Throughout 2021, Monroe defended the United Wrestling Championship across other independent promotions and won herself two more titles. She won the Big League Wrestling Women's Championship at Ultimate Pro Wrestling's 7-Year Anniversary Show in January 2022. With the victory, she held four titles simultaneously.

In February 2022, Monroe started her first wrestling tour of the United States, starting at a meet-and-greet in New Jersey alongside the likes of Shaw, AJ Lee, Harley Cameron, and more. She made her in-ring debut in America the following month at Battleground Championship Wrestling's When World Collide show. She defeated Lady Frost at the historic 2300 Arena in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Monroe also appeared at Combat Zone Wrestling and made other appearances at WrestleCon in April 2022 while competing at Texas Style Wrestling and New Texas Pro Wrestling, where she challenged for the Women's Championship at the promotion's Cowboys from Hell event.

When she got back to the UK, she traveled and wrestled for promotions in Germany and Italy. Monroe attempted to form a tag team with Cameron called Siren's Fury, but the pair would never wrestle a match together. Monroe wrestled one of her first unique matches of many to come for Sovereign Pro Wrestling. She faced Harley Hudson in a Dreamhouse Deathmatch, where anything pink was allowed to be used as a weapon in the bout. In October 2022, Monroe even traveled to Pakistan for a media tour promoting Ring of Pakistan.

Monroe made her debut in Japan for World Wonder Ring Stardom in December 2022. She accompanied Mina Shirakawa and Xia Brookside to the ring at Dream Queendom 2. Following the match, Shirakawa announced the trio would be known as Club Venus. Monroe and Shirakawa would become linked throughout a big majority of Monroe's career.

She made her Stardom in-ring debut at New Blood Premium in March 2023 in a match against Super Strong Stardom Big Machine. Instead of being known as Mariah May, however, she competed under a mask as her alter ego known as Sexy Dynamite Princess. The masked Monroe came out on top. Following the win, Monroe entered the Cinderella Tournament 2023. She was eliminated in the second round by Mai Sakurai, who sent her over the top rope. Monroe also competed at All Star Grand Queendom that April and even joined the English broadcast team for the event. 

Monroe and Shirakawa created an even smaller sub-group of Club Venus and called their tag team Rose Gold. They challenged The New Eras for the Goddesses of Stardom Championship at Sunshine 2023. The pair won the titles and became the 28th Goddesses of Stardom Champions, and the title was Monroe's first gold in the promotion.

Monroe competed in a last chance Rumble match and outlasted 18 other women to qualify for the 5 Star Grand Prix 2023, where she competed in the blue block. In September, she faced her fellow winner of the Rumble match, Hanan, in the final of the tournament. The match would be Monroe's final bout in Stardom until she returned in 2024 for Stardom American Dream to team with Shirakawa and Brookside as Club Venus in a loss to Momo Kohgo, Tam Nakano, and Mayu Iwatani.

Monroe, who went by Mariah May in AEW, was announced as the company's latest signee on a November 2023 episode of "AEW Dynamite," though the company reportedly had interest in her as early as that summer. She appeared in a backstage segment with RJ City. From the beginning, May described herself as a superfan of "Timeless" Toni Storm. In the segment, she claimed she modeled her career after Storm's, following in her footsteps from Japan to AEW. Storm, who was AEW Women's World Champion at the time, was initially unsure of May, but over the months, begrudging adopted her as the "understudy" to her Old Hollywood gimmick.

May's AEW in-ring debut came against Queen Aminata on a January 2024 episode of "Dynamite." She began her transformation into Storm, kicking off a gimmick of going through the "eras" of Storm's career, at Revolution that year when she adopted Storm's former rocker persona, wearing her old ring gear and even using her old theme. 

She also debuted in Ring of Honor at the time, wrestling her first ROH match on Supercard of Honor's Zero Hour pre-show. May was defeated by Anna Jay, but Shirakawa made the save for her former tag team partner. A romantic storyline was teased between the pair, but May later revealed that AEW told them to stop kissing and the angle never came to fruition, though it continued to be teased.

An AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door match was made for the AEW Women's Championship, pitting Storm against Shirakawa, and the story was that May was caught in the middle. May attempted to remain neutral while the women competed for her affection. Storm defeated Shirakawa at the event, which did lead to a kiss between all three women, ending the love triangle-esque angle.

May and Storm were thick as thieves up until May's victory in the 2024 Women's Owen Hart Foundation Tournament. She defeated Willow Nightingale in the final on a July episode of "AEW Dynamite" and won the opportunity to face Storm for the AEW Women's World Championship at All In London the following month. As Storm celebrated with her protege on the stage, May violently turned heel on her now-former friend, beating her down with the commemorative belt and taking out Luther, Storm's butler, as well. May busted Storm open, leading to a bloody end of the "Dynamite" broadcast that would foreshadow the following months-long feud.

The understudy took over the leading role at All In, when May defeated Storm to win the AEW Women's World Championship, her first, and only, gold with the company. Storm would take a hiatus from AEW, though she'd work in other promotions like CMLL, leaving May to defend against Nyla Rose, Yuka Sakazaki, Anna Jay, Nightingale, and former Club Venus stablemate Shirakawa. May fractured their friendship as well, when she looked to hit Shirakawa with a champagne glass during a celebration at Full Gear, and the women brawled when Shirakawa was able to avoid the initial attack. May successfully retained her title over Shirakawa at "Dynamite: Winter is Coming" in December.

Following the match, Storm made her first AEW appearance in four months. She interrupted May, acting as though she had just joined AEW and had some kind of amnesia, and had reverted back to her rockstar gimmick. A confused May attempted to stay far away from Storm, who felt as though she needed to work her way back up the card. May would go on to retain her title in a Tijuana Street Fight against Thunder Rosa at Worlds End.

Storm continued to rise through the ranks with various victories, and hysterical social media bits, as May questioned her sanity from the background. Storm won the Casino Gauntlet match at "Dynamite: Maximum Carnage" in January 2025 to earn a championship opportunity against May. A week later, on "Collision: Homecoming," Storm took to the ring and during a face-to-face with May, revealed she had been playing an act, or "the role of a lifetime," as she put it, since her return the previous month, and she actually did remember everything she and May had been through. Storm stripped out of her old gimmick in the middle of the ring and proclaimed herself "Timeless" once again, to the horror of May who had moved to watch from the stage.

May lost the championship back to Storm at Grand Slam Australia, in her challenger's home country. May took a Storm Zero but quickly rolled out of the ring to recover. When she got back in, Storm rolled her up with the small package. May's only AEW Women's Championship reign lasted at 174 days with seven successful defenses. With the women both at one victory each in their feud, they were set to go head-to-head once more with May demanding a rematch.

That rematch, known as the Hollywood Ending, would go on to become a candidate for Match of the Year in 2025. Storm and May faced off for the final time, in what would also be May's final appearance in AEW, at Revolution in March. The match was billed as a falls count anywhere, no-disqualification match, but it turned out to be a bloody deathmatch, with the women utilizing broken glass and other weapons to tear one another apart. May took a Storm Zero on the stage, and the match ended with "The End" on the tron, with Storm cradling her former protege.

"The End" didn't signify just the finish of The Hollywood Ending or the completion of May and Storm's blood feud, it also, perhaps unknowingly to those involved, marked the end of May's time in All Elite Wrestling. On May 30, not even three months following the big match, May's profile was removed from AEW's roster page. Fans began to speculate when May would show up on WWE programming and if she would appear on the main roster first, or go to the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida to be featured on "WWE NXT."

The speculation didn't last long, however, as May achieved her lifelong dream of becoming a WWE star when she made her first appearance on "NXT" from the crows nest in the PC crowd on June 3. May spoke to the audience and the women in and around the ring, including NXT Women's Champion Jacy Jayne.

May revealed on the next edition of "NXT," after changing her social media handles prior to the episode, that her ring name was now Blake Monroe, in honor of her niece and an homage to Marilyn Monroe. She re-introduced herself to fans in a pre-recorded video playing up her glamorous persona, with a touch of Sabrina Carpenter. She signed her official contract on "NXT" the following week.

After already telling Jayne she was coming after the title, Monroe came to the aid of Jordynne Grace during an attack by Fatal Influence on the July 1 episode of "NXT." They became fast friends, with Monroe attempting to pamper Grace with a spa day in a series of skits. Monroe's televised WWE debut was a match alongside Grace against Fatal Influence at Great American Bash, where Monroe got the pin on Jayne to win the match.

Monroe's time as a babyface in WWE didn't last long, however, and just a day after she pinned the NXT Women's Champion, she turned heel on Grace during her match for the gold at Evolution 2. Grace asked her friend to accompany her to the ring, but would regret it when Monroe used the championship to hit Grace in the back as Jayne sent her into the ropes. Monroe wouldn't align herself with Fatal Influence, however, but would hand the title back to Jayne.

Grace and Monroe would launch into the former AEW Women's Champion's first WWE feud. Monroe cut a promo, one that wasn't well-received by fans due to its body-shaming nature, on Grace, and even started trolling her on social media. Grace fought back, leading to a neck injury in storyline that put her in a brace. The put-downs and efforts on Monroe's end led to a match being made between the pair at NXT Heatwave, a show put on seemingly to counter-program Monroe's former company and their All Out event. Despite Monroe's best efforts to get out of the match on the "NXT" episode before the premium live event, the pair are still set to go toe-to-toe in Monroe's first singles match on a WWE PLE.