Wendy Choo’s Long Road to the Top

Wendy Choo climbed the mountain and became the first Chinese American champion in World Wrestling Entertainment. She's spent years in the developmental system without a clear path for to main roster but now she's beginning to cook.

On April 15, Choo won an eight-woman gauntlet match to claim the WWE Evolve Women's Championship, pinning fellow longtime developmental talent, Nikkita Lyons to finally capture gold.

If you weren't looking too closely, this would just be another developmental talent that WWE saw a bright future for. But Choo is so much more than that and her championship win is a fantastic example in what patience, from both a performer and a promotion, can actually produce.

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Born Karen Yu in New York City, she was an athlete long before she was a wrestler. A gymnast since age five, a Division II volleyball scholarship recipient, a physical education teacher and gymnastics coach at her old high school. She didn't have to take shortcuts to the ring. She built her career in indie promotions from 2014 onward as Karen Q, winning the VPW Women's Championship, the ECWA Super 8 ChickFight Tournament, and grinding through ROH and TNA before ascending to WWE.

After joining the company in 2019, her first hurdle quickly cut her acclimation to the WWE system short. A fractured lateral malleolus in July 2019 took her off the board for nearly two years. Luckily, she survived the COVID-19 roster cuts and a shifting reality for the state of professional wrestling as crowds were sent home.

When she returned in 2021, she began going through the washing machine of changing gimmicks and infrequent pushes. First, she debuted as Mei Ying, a 1,000-year-old mystical figure leading the Tian Sha stable alongside Xia Li (current TNA Knockouts Champion and first Chinese woman to win the belt) and Boa.

While the character was interesting, something unlike everyone else on the NXT roster at the time; WWE creative hasn't always had the best track record with supernatural characters and after Triple H suffered a heart attack that changed NXT's creative direction, Mei Ying disappeared without explanation.

Wendy Coo' return in 2021. Credit: WWE

Once she was repackaged as Wendy Choo: a sleepy wrestler in a onesie with a pink body pillow, endearing and goofy; then creepy and spooky after a heel turn. Fans weren't sure whether to invest in Choo, and the character often found herself on the losing end of match up. With waves of cuts every year and seemingly without much direction, Choo's career always seemed in limbo but obviously the company has seen something real in her. She still managed to picked up a few notable wins, including one Light's Out match where she defeated Tiffany Stratton.

Wendy Choo after her heel turn. Credit: WWE

Choo's sleepy gimmick led her to TNA and a tag team with Rosemary but for the TNA PPV Bound For Glory, Choo and Rosemary failed to defeat TNA Knockouts World Tag Team Champions Spitfire (Dani Luna and Jody Threat) for the titles. After the match, Rosemary turned on Choo, ending their alliance. Their feud ended in a casket match on the October 29, 2024, episode of NXT, which Choo lost.

But here's the thing about wrestlers who bounce through gimmick changes and brand shuffles without ever getting the rocket strapped to them: we're conditioned as fans to just write them off. At least I know I am. This industry moves fast and even the most over talent aren't guaranteed safety in a highly competitive environment like WWE, or pro-wrestling in general.

Attention is currency after all, and developmental brands can feel like a waiting room with a revolving door. Even talent WWE are willing to invest in like Tyra Mae Steele, who wone season 1 of LFG still saw her exit after only a few years of TV.

What I'm saying is: it's easy to watch someone get repackaged for the third time and assume the company has quietly given up.

But some, I'd even argue many, wrestlers are slow burns. They're not all overnight phenoms, even look at our greatest legends, it can take years for someone to get in the groove. Wendy Choo is one of those wrestlers. And the Evolve Women's Championship is proof that developmental sometimes works exactly the way it's supposed to, and as fans, sometimes you just have to let it breathe.

WWE's developmental system exists for a reason: to give performers the space to fail, adjust, and find themselves in front of a live audience. That process can't be rushed for TV. Not every talent arrives as a finished product, especially in an era where more athletes are learning the craft on the fly. The ones who need the most time can become the ones with the highest ceiling.

The pressure to generate immediate buzz, viral moments and optimize merch sales pushes promotions toward quick cuts and constant repackaging, but every time a promising performer gets released before they've had a real chance to connect, the industry loses something it can't statistically quantify: potential. Wendy Choo is a great argument for patience.

She's spent years being creatively reshaped and reinvented, where instead of breaking under the weight of that uncertainty, she just got better. She committed to every version of herself WWE asked her to be and it turned out the simplest answer was the right one: let her be herself.

Not every wrestler on the developmental roster is going to become a champion, but none of them will if they're never given the runway to try.

Choo is no longer the sleeper gimmick or the mystical elder or anyone's betrayed tag partner. She's a 34-year-old woman from Queens who taught gym class, loved wrestling enough to chase it through two knee surgeries and became a champion.

She also seems to be doing a great job helping new talent in Evolve adjust to the WWE system and train them up. She's one of the only talents that came from NXT and already has experience with TV time on the brand and I'm hoping backstage they see her as the leader she can be with her background.

Unfortunately, Choo lost the Evolve Women's Championship to Nikkita Lyons at WWE EVOLVE Succession III after Lyons put her down with a spinning front kick to the face. The loss ended Choo’s 70-day reign as champion and gave Lyons her first championship in WWE. Lyons is another longtime developmental talent seemingly on the rise and I'm (selfishly) hoping these two can put on some great matches building this title by trading it back and forth for a bit.

She had a cryptic message after her title loss, but I hope we see more to her story soon. The future is bright and its starting with the patience and growth for talent down in Evolve.