Katarina Waters[2] (born November 10, 1980[5]) is a German-born English professional wrestler.[2] She is currently signed by World Wrestling Entertainment, working on its ECW brand under the ring name Katie Lea Burchill or just Katie Lea.[1] She spent many years on the independent circuit, particularly in the Frontier Wrestling Alliance, using the name Nikita and is a two time OVW Women's Champion.[8]
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[edit] Professional wrestling career
[edit] Early career
At a young age, Waters read an article about the main event of WrestleMania VI and believed the Ultimate Warrior's mysterious origins to be true. When she came to England aged 18, she was under the impression that only wrestling companies only existed in America until she saw a local show advertised in London. However, the show's style was catered more towards British wrestling than sports entertainment and Waters once again retired thoughts of becoming involved in wrestling until she saw Alex Shane and Dominator on The Jerry Springer Show with their more outrageous gimmicks and became interested again, seeking out National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) UK Hammerlock and being trained by Jon Ryan.[2] Originally Waters used the name Kat but after Stacy Carter began using this name in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), she changed her name to Nikita after the television program La Femme Nikita.[4][2] After being trained Waters made her debut in February 2000[7] on ITV Meridian's TransAtlantic Wrestling Challenge, a tournament between British and American wrestlers of the NWA where she won the Women's Championship.[4]
[edit] Frontier Wrestling Alliance
[edit] Feud with The Family (2002-2003)
Nikita missile dropkicking Stevie Knight.
After starting her wrestling career, Waters sought the Frontier Wrestling Alliance (FWA) and began training with Alex Shane, who inspired her on The Jerry Springer Show. With Shane she began hosting a talk radio programme on Talksport which helped FWA gain national notoriety among the wrestling community. Because of her association with the show she was placed on the card for their February 2002 event, Revival,[2] where she lost to Lexie Fyfe.[9] However, the match was badly reviewed backstage and Waters began training twice a week to improve herself.[2] To keep exposure while improving her in-ring skills, she began to frequently tag team with fellow newcomer Hade Vansen in mixed tag team matches, including a match against British female veteran Sweet Saraya,[9] until August when she impressed with a singles match against Paul Travell[2] which led to a feud where Travell dominated until the end of 2002[9] but in the first FWA event of 2003 Nikita picked up her first singles victory in the company over Travell and went on a singles winning streak for a month until she lost in her third bout against Andy Simmons.[10]
While Nikita had become succesful as a solo wrestler, however, her rivalry with Travell had escalated when he became part of The Family,[4] a group of villainous wrestlers who became FWA Tag Team Champions. The feud escalated after Nikita and Shane failed to win the Tag Team Championship a number of times[10] and led to one of Waters' most famous moments in wrestling[4] when, at the Frontiers of Honour coheld with American promotion Ring of Honor (ROH) in May Alex Shane, Ulf Herman and Nikita took on The Family (Travell, Brandon Thomas and Scott Parker in a hardcore six-man tag team match.[10] Though The Family won, Nikita gained notoriety when she jumped from the top tier in the arena onto the ground, landing on The Family and their feud ended. It was later announced to be the tenth most memorable moment of the FWA's first decade in their YouTube Top 20 Countdown.[11]
[edit] Sporadic appearances (2003-2006)
With her rivalry against The Family over, Nikita began a new storyline where an anonymous bounty had been put on her head. As she took on all comers trying to claim the bounty, Nikita went undefeated in the rest of 2003[10] and 2004[12] including her favourite match against Darren Burridge in March 2004.[2] By June 2004 she had faced and defeated most of the company's major wrestlers which led to the return of the World Association of Wrestling's veteran Sweet Saraya who revealed the bounty had been placed on Nikita by the jealous ring announcer, Jane Childs. Saraya claimed the bounty with a non-sanctioned assault on Nikita, delivering a tombstone piledriver at the Carpe Diem event putting Nikita out of action for months and off the FWA roster for over a year.[13] She returned in October 2005 in a losing effort against Simply Luscious. She quickly made a return victory the next show and went on to win a six-man tag team match, with her and Luscious on opposing teams.[14] Though Nikita would not wrestle after this point, she realligned herself with former tag team partner Hade Vansen and at New Frontiers 2006 helped him win the FWA British Heavyweight Championship[4] in a five-way event featuring Joe Legend, Alex Shane, Jody Fleisch and Jonny Storm. She remained at Vansen's side until June's FWA Vs All Star Wrestling event year when she announced her retirement from the company as had been scouted for World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and sent to Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) for training.[13]
[edit] Ohio Valley Wrestling
After relocating to the United States, Waters began using the ring name Katie Lea,[15] having lost a match to Greek wrestler and namesake Blue Nikita (see below). Nicknamed 'The Kat' to go with her original ring name,[2] she made her debut with a dark match victory over Melody in August 23. A week later she teamed with ODB to make her television debut, losing to Beth Phoenix and Serena. At the time ODB, seeing herself as the best wrestler in OVW, created the OVW Women's Championship for herself and defended it in a battle royal which Lea participated in but ODB retained.[16] On September 13 she had another chance in a four watch match but Serena won the belt, besting Lea, Phoenix and ODB.[3] Her next title opportunity, on October 11, ended in disqualification when an angry Serena, who had lost the belt to Phoenix, interrupted her three way match also including ODB.[17] Lea consoled herself by winning a Hallowe'en costume contest.[16]
[edit] Feud with Beth Phoenix (2006-2007)
The day after Hallowe'en saw the Women's Championship contested for in a guantlet match where Phoenix outlasted the first five contenders but Lea proved too much for her, pinning Serena last to win her first Women's Championship.[18] She would hold the belt for 212 days, giving her the longest single and combined reigns until Melody went over that mark in June 2009.[3] Phoenix did not take her loss well as it was not in a straight singles match and tried to earn a rematch but lost to Lea in a mixed tag team match the following week, with El Aero Fuego and Charles Evans as their respective partners.[16] Lea tried to defend her belt against Serena but the match ended in disqualification when a jealous Phoenix attacked Serena for having a chance before her[19] and so on November 22 the three were put in a no-disqualification non-title match which Serena won. Having already defended her belt against Serena, though, Lea continued to defend newcomers, such as ODB and Jennifer Fit.[16] She also began to host an in-ring talk segment entitled "Kat's Kradle
After this match, on December 6, Beth Phoenix made her way to the ring and announced herself as still being champion with her own belt. Troubleshooter, or authority figure, Daniel Hollie announced that as ODB had created the belt for herself neither belt was official but promised to settle the matter.[8] On the next week's TV taping he announced that the dispute would be settled in OVW's first ladies ladder match and the winner would be officially recognised as Women's Champion. In the last television episode of 2006, Lea climbed to the top of the ladder to retrieve both belts become the undisputed OVW Women's Champion as the year closed.[16] Their feud closed in first episode of 2007 when Basham went to present the OVW Women's Championship, giving it official recognition in the company, only for Phoenix to snatch it from him. However this proved to be a show of sportsmanship as Phoenix presented the belt to Lea herself in recognition of their competetive ladder match.[20]
[edit] Losing the Women's Championship (2007-2008)
She then began a feud with Cherry Pie after two succesful title defences against her resulted in an assault from Pie's stablemates The Untouchables (Deuce and Domino) until Jon Bolen and Ryan Reeves saved her. Days later at a non-televised event Lea and Bolen defeated Cherry and Domino in a mixed tag match. However, the televised rematch was a three-on-two handicap with all three Untouchables defeating Lea and Bolen. At the end of January all the women in OVW competed in a two-out-of-three tug of war which Lea was on the winning side. This led to the Miss OVW competition which saw the women compete in a variety of competitions and matches with ODB gaining the crown on March 21. After this ODB picked up a non-title victory on April 11 and win by disqualification the following week and with a battle royal victory earned herself contention for the title.[20] On June 1, ODB brought Lea's reign as champion to an end in singles action at OVW Six Flags.[3] The following week ODB and Lea were tied winners in a bikini battle royal leading to a hot fudge tug of war to decide the winner, which ODB won. A musical chairs contest the next day ended abruptly when Lea hit ODB with a chair but in the subsequent eight-woman tag team match saw Phoenix pin Lea when ODB retaliated with a chair shot of her own. She won a subsequent musical chairs contest on June 15 at Six Flags. After a series of mixed tag team contests beween the two, ODB retained her title in a three way match also featuring Victoria Crawford on July 21. She pinned Phoenix in August for another shot at the belt but came up short at the end of the month.[20]Milena Roucka then won the belt from ODB in a six-way dark match that Lea participated in.[3] After defeating Roucka twice in non-title matches in late October, Roucka attacked Lea in a game of duck, duck, goose and then defeated Lea in a Kiss My Foot match in December to retain the title.[20]
In 2008, Lea began receiving presents from a secret admirer including a telegram, flowers and an outfit. By late February, Paul Burchill revealed himself to be her admirer[21] and helped her win the Women's Championship for the second time. She lost the belt a week later to Josie in a dark match[3] because WWE had severed ties with OVW and called her up to their programming.[22]
[edit] World Wrestling Entertainment (2008-present)
Katie Lea with her on-screen brother Paul.
Waters made her television debut on February 11's Raw (airing on tape delay from the previous week[23]) as the on-screen sister of fellow FWA alumnus Paul Burchill, becoming Katie Lea Burchill.[24] The two displayed early signs of a gimmick based around incest[25] with Paul using the catchphrase "whatever Katie wants, Katie gets."[24] At WrestleMania XXIV, Lea was one of the lumberjills in the Playboy BunnyMania Match, in which Beth Phoenix and Melina defeated Maria and Ashley.[26].
After appearing alongside Burchill on WWE Heat, Lea made her in-ring television debut on the April 28 edition of Raw defeating Super Crazy in an intergender Handicap Match along with Burchill.[27][28] On May 19, on Raw, she had a confrontation with the Women's Champion, Mickie James where she insinuated James had used her relationship with John Cena to sleep her way to success.[29] Two weeks later, Lea teamed up with Beth Phoenix to defeat James and Melina, in which she pinned James.[30] On June 16, Lea and Burchill defeated James and Mr. Kennedy in a mixed tag team match, where Lea pinned James a second time.[31] She faced James for the title at Night of Champions, but came up short.[32] After she and her brother beat James and Kofi Kingston[33] she received another chance at James' title in August but failed to win.[34] On the last Raw of the year she made her final appearance in a battle royal to determine the next challenger for the Women's Championship, which was ultimately won by Melina.[35]
Two days later, on December 30, it was revealed that Lea and Burchill had been drafted to ECW on Sci Fi, but failed to make an impression with Burchill losing to continue DJ Gabriel's winning streak.[36] Going into 2009, Katie made a better impact in her ECW on Sci Fi debut with a win against Gabriel's partner Alicia Fox.[37] However the Burchills lost a tag team against the Gabriel and Fox the following week.[38] On April 5, 2009 she competed in the 25-Diva Battle Royal at WrestleMania XXV, but the match was won by Santina Marella.[39] Lea wrestled again in July 2009 against the newly drafted Bella Twins. First facing Nikki she took the advantage but Bella swapped places with her twin sister, fooling both Lea and the referee causing her to lose.[40] Two weeks later on WWE Superstars the twins made the same switch in reverse order after the referee could not differentiate between the two and Lea lost again.[41]
[edit] Other promotions
In 2005 she flew to France to take part in the Fighting Spirit Federation's subordinate promotion Queens of Chaos. In an exhibition match she aligned herself with German wrestler Sick (Dejan Stegar) in a losing tag team effort to Kid Kash and Trinity. However, in the Queen of the Rumble match with the World Queen of Chaos Championship on the line she entered second and became the winner, besting competition from England, Ireland, America and Japan.[42] She defended the title all over France and in Switzerland until almost exactly a year later when, after defending the belt to Skye in a two-out-of-three falls match, she announced she had exclusively signed with WWE and had to relinquish the title undefeated.[43] During her time on the Continent she made a guest appearance in German Stampede Wrestling (GSW), losing to Wesna with Nora Greenwald as referee International Impact III.[44] She returned to GSW for Night In Motion VII: A Few Good Men in July 2006 to take on the promotion's other premiere female wrestler and namesake, Blue Nikita. The Greek Nikita won the match and since then Waters has used the name Katie Lea instead.[45]
Just before she lost her Nikita name to Blue Nikita, Waters took part in the video tapings for Shimmer Women Athletes in May 2006. Playing a fan favourite in Volume 5, she defeated Lacey but then for Volume 6 became a villain by using underhand tactics and was pinned by Daizee Haze.[46]
[edit] Personal life
Waters was born and raised in Germany before relocating to England for university. She is fluent in both languages. When she joined the FWA she entered into a relationship with Alex Shane, though they later broke up they remained friends and continued to share a flat in London.[2] As well as wrestling Waters had a small career in film, directing British independent film Welcome To Hell[47] and acting in Utopian Pictures' Tough Justice.[48]
[edit] In wrestling
- Finishing moves
- Hair-pull backbreaker - WWE[49]
- Kat Nip (Inverted facelock neckbreaker)[6] - independent circuit
- Side slam backbreaker[7] - independent circuit
- Signature moves
- Wrestlers managed
- Nicknames
- "The Queen of Chaos" (Independent circuit / WWE)
- "The Queen of England" (OVW)
- "The Scarlet Witch" (WWE)
- "The Seductive Sibling"
[edit] Championships and accomplishments
- Ohio Valley Wrestling
- Pro Wrestling Illustrated
- PWI ranked her #20 of the best 50 female singles wrestlers in the PWI Female 50 in 2009[52]
- Queens of Chaos
- Queens of Chaos Championship (1 time)[42]
- Trans-Atlantic Wrestling
- TWC Women's Championship (1 time)[4]
