What Happened To The WCW Nitro Girls?

Formed in the Summer of 1997, the Nitro Girls were the brainchild of WCW SVP Eric Bischoff.

The idea was devised as a way to entertain fans in the arena during commercial breaks at Monday Nitro tapings, but the Nitro Girls became something of a force of nature on their own and their dance routines became a popular staple of the promotion’s flagship television show.

They were so popular that they even had their own pay-per-view – The Nitro Girls Swimsuit Calendar Special, which partly inspired WWE’s own Diva bikini shoot VHS tapes.

Several Nitro girls became established WCW characters and were in memorable storylines, while others went on to achieve even greater fame elsewhere.

Others ostensibly dropped off the face of the earth after getting out of the business entirely.

So, just what happened to these 18 women who played a small but significant role during the Monday Night Wars?

This is What Happened To The WCW Nitro Girls.

AC Jazz

As well as being a dancer herself, Amy Crawford was the choreographer of the Nitro Girls between 1997 and 1999.

The former Atlanta Falcons cheerleader even feuded with fellow Nitro Girl Spice, before leaving WCW due to a disagreement with management.

Married with two kids, she variously ran her own cheerleading company and then worked in a retirement home once she had left the spotlight.

Baby

Shannon McNeill was a member of the ‘Honeybees’ (the dancers for the New Orleans Hornets) before becoming a Nitro Girl.

Joining the group in early 2000, she had a brief role managing ‘Champagne’ Chris Kanyon but would not see out the year.

McNeill left WCW to resume her college education, got married and had a child before reportedly settling into a career as an occupational therapist.

Beef

For many of the WCW Nitro Girls, their time dancing on the TNT show during the height of the Monday Night Wars is the biggest (and often only) thing they did in wrestling.

This was not true of ‘Beef’, AKA Rhonda Sing.

Singh – better known as former WWE Women’s Champion Bertha Faye – was an experienced wrestler, having performed around the world for two decades prior to signing with WCW.

She only made a couple of appearances with the Nitro Girls as comic relief.

After leaving WCW in 2000, Ronda worked as a caregiver for the disabled.

Sadly, she passed away from a heart attack on July 27, 2001, at the age of 40.

Chae

Another former Atlanta Falcons cheerleader, Chae Adams was one of the original (and most popular) Nitro Girls.

Behind the scenes, Chae gained a degree of infamy due to her real-life relationship with Kevin Nash. She left WCW in late 2000.

Today, Chae is married with kids and lives in Dallas, Texas. In 2021, she launched a Kickstarter for a product called Ring Along (a utility patented bag organiser) that reached its $10,000 goal.

Chameleon

Alongside Baby, Chameleon briefly acted as the valet for Chris Kanyon.

She would eventually leave the Nitro Girls and become the valet of Ernest ‘The Cat’ Miller (as Miss Jones), which included a spell as his ‘assistant’ when Miller was acting WCW Commissioner.

With the company bleeding money, Chameleon – real name Carmel Macklin – was released in late 2000.

Nowadays, Macklin (who has a degree in psychology from Temple University) is the Assistant Principal at Eagle Academy for Young Men in Southeast Queens, New York.

In January 2020, she found herself in the news when another teacher named her in a lawsuit alleging plagiarism and harassment.

Chiquita

A former dancer/choreographer for the Philadelphia 76ers, Chiquita Anderson joined the Nitro Girls in WCW’s dying days.

Anderson was also a member of the Diversity 5 offshoot pop group that released a couple of woeful tunes after WCW and was one third of the short-lived XWF’s X-Girls.

She later founded Infinite Group East, which describes itself as a personal and professional management firm representing actors and artists.

Fyre

Teri Byrne was so warm that WCW named the redheaded fitness competitor Fyre.

Post-WCW, Byrne dabbled in various things, including releasing a comic book called Stiletto centred around a fictionalised version of herself, before she began to work in higher education, which included almost seven years at the University of Phoenix.

Climbing her way up the ladder over the course of two decades in the industry, these days Teri is the Campus President at Southeaster College in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Gold & Silver

Twins Diane and Elaine Klimaszewski had careers in entertainment before and after their blink and you’ll miss it run in WCW as Nitro Girls Gold and Silver.

They parlayed their hot twinness into modelling, TV and film work and their WCW spell ultimately opened up the door to WWE, who offered them a developmental deal and then sent them to work in feeder promotion UPW.

They were cut by WWE in June of 2001, but the twins’ biggest slice of notoriety arrived when they were cast as the Coors Light Twins in a controversial national commercial campaign for the beer giant in 2002.

More media, TV and film work followed, but as the 2000s ended Diane and Elaine faded from the limelight.

Now married, Elaine Goldman (who is the wife of former Juul Labs CEO Tyler Goodman) and Diane Stonefield (who teaches Pilates in California) are both mothers and enjoy seemingly quiet, normal lives.

Kimberly

Then-wife of Diamond Dallas Page, Kimberly was the ‘leader’ of the Nitro Girls and, thus, the highest paid and most prominently pushed of the bunch.

A former fitness model and Playboy playmate, Kimberly had been with the company for years before the Nitro Girls became a thing, as the manager of her husband, Johnny B. Badd and The Booty Man.

As the leader, Kimberly got the lion’s share of camera time and was involved in storylines, but she also had heat with the rest of the Nitro Girls, which ultimately led to her leaving the group.

She’d stick around in WCW and was a featured performer until her June 2000 departure, which was expedited due to backstage heat with Scott Steiner.

She did some work in film and television – including a memorable scene in The 40-Year-Old Virgin – while her and Dallas divorced in 2005.

Despite this, they remain best friends and she works for and owns part of DDP Yoga. In recent years she has also worked as an interior designer in Utah.

Naughty-A

Jamie Cragwall was yet another talent who came from the world of professional dance, having worked for the Atlanta Hawks prior to joining WCW.

Per her LinkedIn page, Cragwall is a Client Executive for the insurance company IMA, having worked in the services industry since the late 2000s.

Though her bio lists her job’s location as Bolton, Massachusetts, she resides in Helena, Montana and, judging by her Instagram page, is really, really into fly fishing and the general outdoors.

Skye

In late 1999, WCW held a competition to find a new Nitro Girl.

300 women took part, with fans voting online to narrow the field down to eight finalists. Of those eight, it was a leggy, former Baltimore Ravens cheerleader who got the spot and a $10,000 dollar prize.

Initially known as Skye, she soon took up a larger role as the heel valet Miss Hancock. Most wrestling fans, however, know her simply as Stacy Keibler.

Stacy would join WWE after WCW went under and became a big star, before eventually leaving the company in 2006.

Life after WWE saw Keibler appear on Dancing with the Stars, while cropping up in other films, TV shows and major commercials.

She also had a tabloid-friendly romance with Hollywood megastar George Clooney, though she eventually married and had three children with Future Ads CEO Jared Pobre.

Stacy Keibler was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame class of 2023.

Spice

A Nitro Girl between 1997 and 2000, Spice was one of the most popular members of the ensemble.

Post-WCW, Melissa Bellin began studying and earned her Doctorate in Chiropractic Medicine.

Now known as Dr. Melissa Grill Petersen, she is married and has two children. The founder and CEO of the Human Longevity Institute resides in North Carolina and occasionally pops up on podcasts (mostly non-wrestling ones) and does public speaking engagements.

Starr

Jennifer Bancale joined the troupe in May 2000 and was originally called Sapphire. And if you want to know why her name was quickly changed to Starr, let’s just say Jerry McDevitt and the lawyers for Titan Sports Inc. may have had a slight problem with the name ‘Sapphire’.

There’s not a great deal out there about Bancale, who doesn’t have much of a public profile, but it appears she is based in Central Coast, California and works for the company Movement for Life as a physical therapist.

Storm

After winning the 1991 Miss Black America contest, Sharmell Sullivan began a career in professional dance, which included a multi-year stint touring with James Brown.

She joined the Nitro Girls in 1998 as Storm and soon became more heavily involved in storylines as Paisley, valet of The Artist and Kwee Wee.

A post-WCW run in WWE didn’t quite pan out and Sharmell pretty much retired from the business, before being brought back in 2005 to manage real-life husband Booker T.

As Queen Sharmell and King Booker, the couple were a riot and a highlight of WWE television during that period. Sharmell joined Booker when he left WWE for TNA, before having twins in 2010.

Since then, she has been involved in running the Reality of Wrestling promotion.

Sharmell was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2022.

Syren

For those who don’t remember – or don’t care or never knew – Syren was the Nitro girl with the police officer gimmick who would hand out fake citations to wrestlers.

Like Chiquita, she was once a member of the Philadelphia 76er’s dance team and I assume she was brought in to replace Fyre as the Nitro Girls’ resident redhead.

A Nitro Girl towards the end, her most notable WCW contribution was in a romance storyline that involved Reno, Billy Kidman and Shane Douglas.

Now married, Alison Pfau Solem resides in Los Angeles and works as a Director of Women’s Buying for fashion brand Forever 21.

Tayo

Tayo Reed started out her life as a singer at Six Flags, before being chosen as a dancer for the Atlanta Hawks. An original Nitro Girl member, Tayo didn’t get a great deal of focus for whatever reason and left WCW in 1998.

Since then, she has operated her own dance and performing arts academy in Georgia. The self-proclaimed prophetess is also bang into religion and founded her own church.

Tygress

Vanessa Bozman joined the Nitro Girls in 1997 and was christened Tygress.

In 2000, she began enjoying a much more prominent role on WCW television as the valet for the Filthy Animals stable.

She wrestled from time to time, including in mixed tag matches, such as the one at Halloween Havoc 2000 where she and Konnan defeated Shane Douglas and Torrie Wilson.

Tygress also had an on-screen romance with Rey Mysterio, perhaps the filthiest animal of them all.

Vanessa Wiley is married and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she is an SVP at Wells Fargo, specialising in Operational Risk and Reporting.

Whisper

Rebecca Curci – who Eric Bischoff claims got signed because Turner Sports exec Harvey Schiller met her at an Atlanta Falcons game, fancied her and insisted she become a Nitro Girl – was one of the original six members of the group.

In March of 1999, however, Whisper gave her notice to WCW so that she could swan off and marry Shawn Michaels (whom she had been introduced to through a mutual friend of theirs).

Rebecca Hickenbottom played a major role in turning around The Heartbreak Kid’s life, helping him find religion and clean up his act, which enabled him to make his improbable return to the ring in 2002.

The couple (who have a son and daughter) made rare appearances together on WWE television, most notably in a segment at SummerSlam 2008 which saw Mrs. HBK take a very real punch to the jaw courtesy of Chris Jericho.