LadySports ::: Awesome Anne Returns!

By Shiai Mata

Fans on both sides of the Atlantic are rejoicing at the news that Awesome Anne is returning to the sport at last!

It’s not as if she’s been lazily doing nothing these last few years, of course. After all, temporarily retiring from wrestling was never her first choice to begin with, but a knee injury eventually took that decision out of her hands. The injury was so debilitating, she feared she’d have to make her retirement permanent. As she explains, “At one point, I thought a return wasn’t going to happen, as I had a lot of pain in the joint. But the surgery in July seems to have worked, and it is a lot better. It’s not one-hundred percent, but getting there.”

She managed to keep busy these last couple of years, including spending a lot of time working with her daughters, teenaged Charisma and young Daisy, as they both trained for amateur grappling competitions (both can claim a number of tournament championships, as did their mother back in her earlier amateur days). But then the problems of the world intruded.

Both Anne and Charisma are members of the Territorial Army (the British equivalent to the National Guard in the United States). “When the Gulf War kicked off,” Anne explains, “both Charisma and myself were mobilized into the regular army. It wasn’t a very happy time for us. With me having the injury, I had to work from my unit in the UK supporting our troops in the Gulf, and it’s not very nice sending your child to a war zone, even if she was working in a field hospital as a medic. As a mother, like many others, I didn’t have a good night’s sleep for a long time.”

Thankfully, Charisma’s tour of duty recently concluded and she’s now back in England. “I am so pleased that she is home safe and sound. At the moment she is having some time out from wrestling, and she’s busy with work and with life. So I have to go it alone for a while, but I intend to have a good go at it!”

Going it alone is nothing new for the blond. Prior to successfully tag teaming with Charisma as the Smiling Assassins, she had been wrestling for over a decade, first under the ring name of Lady Anne Silver, and then as Awesome Anne, and enjoyed the rare distinction of winning several professional wrestling and amateur wrestling championships concurrently, a remarkable testament to her formidable skills. And if that wasn’t enough, she was also a champion bodybuilder!

Anne became known as a “powerhouse” wrestler, thanks to her muscular physique. But anyone who has seen her in action knows that she’s a tremendously skilled technical grappler as well. Indeed, she’d much rather make an opponent submit to a backbreaker or a sleeperhold than to simply overpower her into defeat…although Anne has never been afraid to get physical whenever the occasion warrants, as fans who saw her PGWA match against Susan Green know full well!

Indeed, at the time of Anne’s match with Green, she was at a definite career high. So it must have been tremendously frustrating to have to sideline herself for so long because of her injury. Happily, she’s confident now that her knee is capable of sustaining her through the most grueling of matches. She’ll have the chance to prove it to both herself and to the fans when she makes her return to the sport at Pippa L’Vinn’s Christmas Show in Manchester on the 4th of December. There’s no official word yet on who she’ll be facing, but one can’t help but suspect she’d like a crack at Pippa’s PGWA belt.

We here at LadySports Online would like to officially welcome Awesome Anne back to the squared circle, and to wish her nothing but success. And, with any luck, we’ll see her…and possibly Charisma…back in the PGWA ring someday soon!