6/15/2025

© Chris Gannon

A Wrestler You Should Know About: Nina Samuels

In the second edition of our “A Wrestler You Should Know About” series, Chris Gannon introduces us to UK stalwart Nina Samuels.

By Chris Gannon

On the 18th August 2022, a story appeared on Fox News Digital entitled WWE to launch NXT Europe in 2023, NXT UK to make impact at upcoming event, an incredibly optimistic sounding piece about the successes of the NXT UK brand and the imminent launch of NXT Europe (which, as of the 30th May 2025, is still imminent), and an ever so quick mention that the NXT UK brand would be going on a brief hiatus. Shortly after the piece came out, several NXT UK wrestlers announced that they had been released from their contracts.

When a wrestler is released from WWE, the question of what comes next for them has so many answers. Some, having worked for the biggest wrestling company in the world, feel like they can’t go backwards on a career path and choose to leave the industry. Many get themselves back on the indies as soon as possible, ready to show that they’re ready to go and there was a reason that WWE hired them in the first place. Nina Samuels might have set the record for that when she wrestled Rayne Leverkusen at “Hustle” literally hours after her release. A few days later, she won the Riot Cabaret Women’s championship, the first of 12 she’d hold over the next two and a half years – 10 of them simultaneously. The 2024 Wrestling Observer awards had four names in the European MVP category, and in my opinion, Nina should not only have been amongst them, she should have been number 1.

Nina Ten Belts © James Musselwhite

Nina, a lifelong wrestling fan, started training in 2014, after working for years as a professional dancer but hitting a ceiling in her career. In an episode of Flash Morgan’s Wrestling Friends podcast in 2018, she discussed how she initially trained at the 4FW school in Swindon before joining the London School of Lucha Libre. Finding that her background in dancing helped her adapt to wrestling quickly, Nina debuted for Lucha Brittania after 11 training sessions.

Over the next few years, she worked as La Diablesa Rosa for Lucha Brittania and Nina Samuels elsewhere. As Nina, she developed into an arrogant villain, whose hometown was “Somewhere better than you”, a wrestler who was also incredibly strong, agile and quite capable but wasn’t averse to taking some shortcuts. Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me if she had a car full of terrified dalmations, ready to be made into a coat and new title straps, but you never doubt that she believes she deserves the victories.

The two sides of Nina Samuels’ ring work  (© Chris Gannon)

Beyond the European scene, Nina has also performed across the world, recently making her debut in America, where she equalled the record for successful defences of the EVE title, and completing several tours with Sendai Girls, including performing on Meiko Satomura’s retirement show. Nina was also one of the opponents selected for Satomura’s final UK match in February, showing the high regard she’s held in by one of the most respected wrestlers living today.

When the show ends, however, is when you get to know the real Nina, the one with the incredibly dark secret that she’d rather you not know: she’s actually really nice. She’s a fan of The Room and an excellent baker (I highly recommend her brownies if she’s selling them at a show).

She will probably hate this, but I managed to get some high praise for her from people that she’s worked with:

If Nina is working a show near you, buy a ticket as soon as you can and get ready to boo your hearts out, yet still be impressed by The Star Of The Nina Samuels Show.

By Chris Gannon // Instagram // X // Bluesky

© NJPW

Kazuchika Okada is Evil Orange Cassidy

Low-effort Kazu is a great character, actually.

By: Micah

Imagine, if you will, Orange Cassidy.

A man of little effort but great skill. He can put on a mat clinic as easily as he can deliver a well-timed knockout strike. He doesn’t beat people with his superior talent and skill, though he probably could. He gets in their head. He does antics. He pisses them off. And though he could (and occasionally does) set a great pace and out-wrestle them, half the time it seems like he’s just in it to entertain himself.

You kinda see it right? Let me share it with you.

I’m not here to say you’re wrong if you’re not feeling Okada right now. But walk with me a bit here, because I’m loving this Okada, and maybe I can help you love him a little bit, too.

There is a chorus of fans frustrated that we aren’t getting the New Japan “God Of Wrestling” Okada. It’s not hard to see why. He’s been called the Greatest Wrestler Alive. He put on years of back-to-back-to-back bangers. Even if you take a star off Dave’s ratings for being in the Tokyo Dome, he’s a 9.64 on Cagematch, he’s in most every list of Top 10 wrestlers of the 2010s, and the “scale-breaking” epic he had with Omega set off a firestorm across the internet.

(If when I said ‘scale-breaking epic match with Omega’ you said “Which one”, well, yeah. That’s the point.)

© NJPW

His influence is off-the-charts. His 720-day reign was a magic show of wrestling excellence. He elevated every opponent and refused to be anything less than brilliant, regardless of who he was in the ring with. It was an electric time. The frenzy around “Will This Be The Person Who Wins It” was unreal. In some ways, it was the precursor to what WWE did with Roman Reigns and The Bloodline. Even Cody’s ‘lose the big one, then win the next’ echoes Kenny’s similar path to dethrone Okada.

He would wrestle a new challenger each time, in their style of match, and he would effortlessly match them. Then in the deep end of 30+ minutes, he’d make them wrestle his match. A distance runner with inhuman endurance putting out instant classics with ease.

Kazuchika Okada was the Rainmaker. The golden champion. But that’s not the character he’s playing now.

Right now, he is Evil Orange Cassidy. He’s a lackadaisical asshole doing antics to amuse himself while winning matches by kicking people in the dick. And the thing is, he doesn’t have to cheat. He could win the hard way, but where’s the fun in that? Purists want him to bring the heat. Instead, he brings the middle finger.

In storyline, Okada’s character was brought in to AEW as a big money signing by the Young Bucks, so let’s start there. The Bucks are currently incarnated as entitled, obnoxious, unserious, and lacking respect for the business. They came out dressed as a caricature of America’s founding fathers for a street fight. These are the people who brought him in.

© AEW

This Okada, he doesn’t respect his opponents. He’s not trying to bring the rain for his company. He’s not a standard-bearer. He’s here to amuse himself. He’s here for easy wins. He’s here to do the Mercedes dance and to make bad jokes. He’s got a massive guaranteed contract and he’s wrestling mid-carders he believes are beneath him.

It’s a logical continuation for a champion who literally did it all. He’s “the best tournament wrestler of all time”. He holds wins over every great that he’s ever faced. And when he enters these matches, he does so with the arrogance such a history builds within the soul.

If you watch, he starts every match giving as little effort as possible. He isn’t watching the angles. He’s not working to a gameplan. He just does moves and laughs and doesn’t take his opponent seriously. He acts as a God and treats the ring and his opponents like his playthings.

And there comes a point where his opponent proves him wrong. They find another level, take it to another gear, and they start to beat him. This is where it gets good, because when they take it up a level, reluctantly, Okada raises his game to meet them.

Okada appears annoyed at them, but when pressed he uses more skill, more technique, more effort. And when his mockeries leave him open and his opponent inevitably finds their strength, he gets rocked and looks angry and has to raise his game again.

© Lee South/ AEW

My favorite part about the character is that Okada could have just started the match as God-Champion Okada, but instead he starts with slaps and middle fingers and cheeky trickster things. Only at the point his opponent’s skills demand flashes of the old Okada do we see them. By the time his opponent is five gears deeper and fired up, Okada’s having to bust out classic moves and clever thinking to keep up.

The character’s conceit is that he’s a God, but as his very human opponents approach his level, they reveal the divinity in themselves. Each match he underestimates his opponent, and each match he gets proved wrong. When finally they get to a place where they match him, where they scare him, that’s when he could choose to unleash the Okada of Legend and truly wrestle them at the highest level.

But he’s an asshole. So he just kicks them in the dick.

The character cheats in multiple ways, but what makes him going back to the dick-kick so funny is that he could do other things. He could try to win in other ways. But my take is that Okada chooses the dick-kick because it amuses him. It isn’t the desperation move of someone willing to do anything to win. It’s a deliberate statement that he doesn’t respect his opponents, he doesn’t respect the contest, he doesn’t respect the fans, and nobody out there can make him.

© NJPW

This is reading a lot into the character, of course. Outside of the fiction, there are whispers that maybe he’s just in retirement mode. There’s also the parallel that we’re not getting New Japan Okada the same way we don’t always get New Japan Kenny. And we have to mention that AEW sometimes has a weakness in failing to give things that air of legendary status they deserve.

Yet this Okada is one I love every time I see him. It reminds me of Red-Haired, Balloon(maker) Okada where people are demanding he perform Mega Champion and he’s just off doing unappreciated character work in the off-season. At that time, he was coming off an epic reign and one day would be the Main Attraction again. In-between, he experimented with something else.

I don’t know if All-In Texas will be the return of God-Champion Okada. It should be, if they can do it. Or sometime soon after. An Okada run on primetime American TV would be a thing of beauty. But that’s not his role right now.

Right now, he’s a midcard champion. And this character, of a God who takes nothing as seriously as he should and gets petulant, angry, and sometimes cowardly when the world refuses to be his playground, is a fantastic way to give an in-canon reason for why he’s having these “competitive” matches. And in so doing, he’s letting his opponents show what they can do and prove that, in fact, they can keep up with the greatest.

Okada is a delight every time he’s onscreen. He’s irreverent and fun. His matches are slower, but they are still filled with the in-ring storytelling he’s known for, if you know where to look.

Much like Balloon(maker) Okada, this character won’t last. He’ll probably be the serious Rainmaker once again. His matches will have that air of importance and sports-like athleticism, I’m sure. For now, he’s doing something different, and that’s okay.

© AEW

In this window, while he’s a puckish asshole, I hope you’re able to laugh and enjoy it along with me.

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