Wrestling / Madison Rayne

"SHE'S A KILLER QUEEN"

Ashley Nichole Lomberger (née Simmons, formerly Cabot; born February 5, 1986) is an American professional wrestler trained by Jeff Cannon. She currently works for All Elite Wrestling under the ring name Madison Rayne and is best known for competing in Impact Wrestling.

Simmons began her wrestling career on the independent circuit wrestling under the monikers Ashley Lane and Lexi Lane, calling Ohio Championship Wrestling her her home promotion. She represented the all-female promotion SHIMMER Women Athletes in 2007, where she was one half of the first-ever Shimmer Tag Team Champions with partner Nevaeh, until In 2009, she joined TNA, aligning herself with Angelina Love and Velvet Sky as part of The Beautiful People. In March 2010, she, along Lacey Von Erich and Velvet Sky won the TNA Knockouts Tag Team Championship, with the three defending the title under the Freebird rule. In April 2010 at Lockdown, she won her first of five TNA Knockouts Championships. In addition, she was the first one to hold both titles simultaneously.

Later, Rayne would win the Ohio Valley Wrestling Women's title after it struck up a developmental deal with TNA. She also made appearances in Wrestlicious as Amber Lively.

Rayne was a longtime mainstay for TNA (now known as Impact) until 2022, when she joined AEW as both a performer and a backstage coach for women.

QUEEN TROPES

• Action Girl: Sought out indie promoters as soon as she was done with high school and debuted in an action role alongside Jeff Cannon.
• Action Mom: As of 2013, when she openly referred to returning to the ring after giving birth in TNA. Apparently she's the first knockout to do so while working for the company.
• Alliterative Name: Her first ring name.
• Alpha Bitch: Whether as a member of The Beautiful People or on her own, Madison is quite the bitch.
• Arch-Enemy
  • Hailey Hatred, Jessicka Havok, Sassy Stephie, Portia Perez. The first from their first meeting. The next went overboard in their first match and then teamed with Hatred. She and the third chased each other across a continent. The fourth was a poor tag team partner who gave Lane more grief with replacement partners.
  • In TNA, Mickie James, most notably. Also she always seems to be against Angelina Love. They've feuded with both women as the heel and face(it had been going back and forth since before TNA, when they first met, but The Beautiful People breakup in TNA is where it became personal).
• Backstabbing the Alpha Bitch: A variation. Angelina Love had to leave TNA due to visa issues, so Madison slowly and steadily became the top Knockout, eclipsing Angelina's role as the leader of the Beautiful People.
• Badass Bookworm: In between shows, Lane maintained a 4.0 GPA while studying radiology in college.
• Bad Boss: Became this to Tara in mid-2011, leading to that unit disbanding.
• Bash Brothers: Big Guns Jeff Cannon, Nevaeh, Lorelei Lee, Tracy Brooks, Lones Oaks.
• The Beautiful Elite: In TNA. She was a member of a group called "The Beautiful People'', with their own sorority, and pretty much kept this gimmick when she went solo. Outside of TNA this usually was not the case, although she did have a "too good for the plebeians" gimmick in Heartland Wrestling Association and NEPW's affiliates.
• Beauty Contest: During her Queen Bee phase, she came down to the ring wearing a tiara and waving like a beauty contestant - often wearing a sash too. In real life she's a former Pageant Queen.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Wished really hard for Brittany to stop trying to "help" her in her feud with former Beautiful People partners. Eventually this lead to Angelina Love and Velvet Sky cheating Madison Rayne out of a match while Brittany stood by and did nothing.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Lane is usually quite friendly. She'll break your face once the bell rings, but she will also help you get it fixed after it rings again.
• The Bully: Various clips popped up around the the web of her and Nevaeh hazing one of Fantasy's students, part time wrestler Sumiko. Hellena Heavenly's site shows Lane cutting her open with a nail, the kind you hammer into wood.
• Butt-Monkey: Of the Beautiful People before Angelina Love had to leave, after which she eventually took over. She wasn't just the whipping girl of The Beautiful People, she was also the smallest, making Angelina Love and Velvet Sky look (even more) like high school bullies.
• Canon Discontinuity: Battle Angels hyped its CyberStorm 2007 internet pay per view with a "first time ever" match between Lexi Lane and Jessicka Havok, despite the fact Lane and Havok had been feuding for over seven months on the shows of at least two other companies. It also cast doubt on Lane's chances of victory despite their feud partially being over Lane winning their first match.
• Car Fu: Had Mickie James's arm broken by having it run over by Tara's bike.
• Cat Fight: Averted by her "Cathouse" Brawl with Sassy Stephie, despite being billed as such. Lexi lost the match but beat Stephie so bad Stephie wouldn't be medically cleared to wrestle for at least a month.
• The Cavalry: She, Nevaeh and Cheerleader Melissa tried to save MsChif from Sara Del Rey and Amazing Kong, which really just attracted the attention of Wesna Busic and Annie Social. Still, this resulted in "Melischif" taking less of a beating over the course of the resulting SHIMMER volumes, as she and Nevaeh provide more targets for them. The good guys did prevail in the end, but not because of this trope.
• Combination Attack: Double wrist lock to double dropkick with Nevaeh. Double straight jacket slam and double Russian leg sweep with Velvet Sky.
• Continuity Nod: It wasn't enough to kill Roxxi Laveaux's career. She had to take her finishing move too.
• Create Your Own Villain: Madison began as a partner of Taylor Wilde, before being "pledged" into the Beautiful People (or rather, their new "sorority", "Mi Pi Sexy") and absolutely drug through the mud by Angelina and Velvet. Angelina leaves, the team becomes a Terrible Trio of Velvet, Madison, and new recruit Lacey Von Erich. Much more successful than the originals, title-wise (One Knockouts single, and tag team gold at the same time) Angelina returns, and Madison begins a quick decline into rage, resulting in the entire "brand" being split in two before being reclaimed by Velvet and Angelina (Lacey actually rejoined them against Madison for a cup of coffee before being released). Madison, ironically, was made to be the heel through the latter angle. Madison would then go on to create her own villain in Brittany.
• Crowd Chant: "WOW!" (from Nevaeh's reaction to defending SHIMMER's tag belts against the "Death Kongs"). Ironically, Lane had told Lady Sports she was shooting for SHIMMER with intent to wow the crowd a year beforehand.
• David Versus Goliath: She and Nevaeh fended off quite a few tag teams composed of noticeably larger wrestlers during their SHIMMER tenure, once it was match time anyway. Things didn't go so well for them in fights outside of matches, and in competition their good fortunes finally ran out when Annie Social sicked Wesna Busic and Melanie Cruise on them since they never had another chance to beat them.
• Demoted to Extra: She and the other Knockout Champions were non factors during the Immoral angle in TNA, even though it was specifically about Eric Bischoff wanting all the title belts.
• Disney Owns This Trope: Tried to trademark the term "The Beautiful People" so she could start her own after being dumped by the rest. There's only one way to settle something like that! In the ring. (She and Tara lost)
• Disqualification-Induced Victory
  • The International Home Wrecking Crew were the initial winners when they got a title shot at Lane and Nevaeh but the decision was reversed because Jetta cheated.
  • Almost a Running Gag against Sara Del Rey. At Remix Pro, Rayne actively tried to get herself disqualified after Mickie James refused to let Rayne take a count out loss and the ref still ended up determining Del Rey had used a foreign object, awarding Madison the match.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Her blonde hair before and during her time with The Beautiful People, since she looks better with dark hair.
• Enemy Mine
  • Reformed The Beautiful People with Velvet Sky due to Gail Kim's new bodyguard, Lei'D Tapa and then Tapa's new tag team partner, Alpha Female. This ended up not being enough, and so they also joined with ODB. When Angelina Love wanted in though, Rayne left them.
  • Eventually ended up teaming alongside Angelina Love and Havok in TNA.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Her already blonde hair was lightened to platinum blonde around the time she won the Knockouts title. As power went to her head, she added extensions. After the Beautiful People disbanded, she dyed her hair brown. After losing the Knockouts title, she removed the extensions so her hair was shoulder-length. After returning from her pregnancy now as a face, the hair has grown out slightly and been dyed red.
• Face: According to Lane herself, she was a face for 98% of her pre TNA career, although critics frequently insisted she wasn't suited for the face role and cite her TNA career as vindication for that stance.
• Finger Poke of Doom: After Tara's victory over TNA Knockout Champion Angelina Love at the biggest show of the year, Bound For Glory, Madison Rayne poked her and took the belt for herself.
• Finishing Move
  • Lexi Lane used a reverse STO called DisLexia. The Rayne Drop (Back head crash on her shin, think Zack Attack or Kiss My Sass) initially in TNA, replaced by a spear when she returned as a face.
  • A big boot while Nevaeh does an STO.
• For Your Own Good: Her argument for keeping Brittany away from Angelina Love and Velvet Sky, especially after they gave her a concussion.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot
  • A main reason for why she and Velvet Sky would "stretch" before matches while Angelina wasn't with them in the Beautiful People. If you think this was the kind of stretching athletes help each other with that could simply be considered "hot" by coincidence, you thought wrong.
  • Occasionally, chants of "Kiss" rang out from the Impact Zone during her angle with Brittany. It didn't help that Brittany started it, saying infamously during a promo that she wanted to "be with" Madison.
• Girl Next Door: Lexi Lane's initial gimmick. So nice and sweet fans were almost scared at the though of being turned on by her (she always kept it classy)...Madison Rayne's killed that gimmick dead.
• Girl Posse: The Beautiful People.
• Girliness Upgrade: Lexi Lane was a classy, introverted tomboy(or more rarely, a disdainfully distant jock). Ashley Lane was an extroverted tomboy who loved to hangout(or jeering jock). This was logical development. Madison Rayne the porn star, sorority sister, pageant queen, Alpha Bitch call girl was not. Amber Lively to a lesser degree, in that cheer leading is a predominately female sport.
• Heel–Face Turn: Once she returned after her pregnancy.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Ashley Lane and Nevaeh were not strangers to the heel role but were faces for the entire time they teamed under the SHIMMER banner. When they took the SHIMMER tag team belts to other promotions though? They slid right back into their old "too good for you" heel role in the Heartland Wrestling Association.
• Hero Killer: Or rather, a billed as a "career killer", after beating Tara and Roxxi Laveaux in "title vs career" matches. While this pretty much ended after she failed to end Angelina Love's TNA career, the "killer" moniker stuck.
• Human Shield: Used referee Earl Hebner as one upon learning Awesome Kong had returned to TNA and taken exception to Madison Rayne's boast of being unbeatable.
• Improbable Weapon User: Tara's motor cycle helmet. Which is just fine if she planned on her never riding with it on again.
• It's Personal: She and Josie had a contest to get the best crowd reaction from the Southern All-Star Wrestling fans that got so personal they ended up returning to the SAW Arena after everyone else but a referee and PGWA cameraman had left to settle it without "distraction".
• The Mole: For The Beautiful People in their efforts to humiliate Taylor Wilde.
• The Napoleon: She (and Nevaeh to a lesser extent) may have been the baby faces but they still came off this way when trying to prove they weren't intimidated by the "Death Kongs", who absolutely dwarfed them and then started tagging along with another much larger wrestler in Wesna Busic for added measure.
• Loony Fan: Brittany in TNA. Madison Rayne wasn't particularly fond of her to start with but tolerated her presence. Then, to paraphrase Rayne, "Things got weird" and she wanted Brittany gone.
• Loophole Abuse: Sat at ringside for a #1 contenders' battle royal. Velvet Sky was the apparent winner and Madison got up to congratulate her - only to throw her out of the ring and declare herself the winner.

• Ms. Fanservice: What else would you expect from a member of a stable called "The Beautiful People?"
• Older Hero Versus Younger Villain: Proclaimed Mickie James wouldn't be able to beat her because Mickie was older, but for some reason expected Tara to be able to beat Mickie despite being even older.
• One of the Boys: She set aside two days of the week for training with "the boys" for at least three hours.
• One-Steve Limit
  • Lexi Lane to Ashley? Most definitely had to do with her entering territory the already established Lexie Fyfe was stomping around in.
  • Lacey Von Erich was her Freebird style partner in The Beautiful People. The Lovely Lacey was her Home Wrecking adversary.
  • In response to Tara and Madison breaking her arm, Mickie James provoked Sara Del Rey with the knowledge Rayne had started calling herself "The Queen Of Wrestling."
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: She's 5'3", not a particularly bulky 5'3" for a wrestler(compared to say, Annie Social or even Stephie), yet relies on Nikki Roxx's barbie crusher, an elevated hammerlock cradle guillotine choke bomb^note or La Rosa Driver to Lucha Libre fans.
• Pom-Pom Girl: Amber Lively, a cheerleader who plays into the Susie Spirit archetype established by GLOW and as such was a nice girl. Before this, she was a varsity cheerleader in high school.
• Power Stable: Besides The Beautiful People, she and Gail Kim were in league with Karen Jarret and Traci Brooks for a while.
• Put on a Bus: On maternity leave. Her contract later expired while she was still on maternity leave. But she returned in 2014.
• Red Baroness: The Queen of Wrestling. The Queen Bee.
• Religious Bruiser: Can be seen briefly stopping to pray on the stage when coming out for matches in her 2014 face run. She also calls herself a "Bible Thumper" on her Twitter bio as of writing this.
• Ricky Morton: Defied the Impact before Genesis 2011 when Rayne sent a message to Knockouts championship challenger Mickie James by not allowing Sky to ever tag out before she and Tara finished her.
• The Rival
  • Lexi Lane's first was Jayme Braxton, from the very day she debuted in Ohio Championship Wrestling. A month in, Ivory was called in to referee one of their matches.
  • One of her first in Ohio was future tag team partner Nevaeh, who ended her first title reign. And after their reign as SHIMMER tag team champions was ended by the Canadian Ninjas and she went to TNA, Nevaeh would become Rayne's opponent again and eventually join a new team called the SNS Express.
  • The Radiant Rain and The Lovely Lacey were the first team Ashley Lane and Nevaeh beat when they started teaming in SHIMMER and they faced stiff opposition from The International Home Wrecking Crew for sometime afterwards, having plenty of fights in other feds too. Rain's lack of amusement with "Lane's" TNA, work for instance. Lane (and Lively) opposed also Lacey (and White Magic) away from SHIMMER.
  • Never won the OCW Women's Championship back from Sara Del Rey. Del Rey and Amazing Kong beat the stuffing out of her and Nevaeh multiple times but never managed to win the SHIMMER tag team title belts from them. Partially because they tended to go way too far and partially because Del Rey was too selfish.
  • Nicole Matthews, due to her close association with Lane's former tag team partner, Portia Perez and the fact that Perez and Matthews faced her in several SHIMMER matches.
  • Lane and Cheerleader Melissa were friends. Rayne and Raisha Saeed were enemies. Alissa Flash...varied.
• Run the Gauntlet
  • Ashley Lane and Nevaeh ran it against The Suicide Blondes, The Australian Pink Ladies, The Experience, The Canadian Ninjas and The International Home Wrecking Crew to become the first SHIMMER Tag Team Champions.
  • Defeated Jessicka Havok to qualify for the Queen Of The Knockouts gauntlet at One Night Only 2014, which she also won.
• Sex for Services: Angelina Love and Velvet Sky gave her to referee Slick Johnson to ensure Love stayed Knockouts champion. Rayne would take up the practice willingly during her own championship run with Brian Stiffler.
• Screaming Warrior: And it's a scratchy scream at that. Even when they were besties, Gail Kim playfully massaged her ear after Madison Rayne's outbursts.
• Shout-Out: Her entrance theme tells us that... "She's a killer queen"
• Signature Move: Calf kick, Mafia kick(DDT if they don't fall down), top rope cross body, wheelbarrow arm drag, Lexi-canrana, scissor stomp (push up face buster)
• Slasher Smile: One of the reasons Lexi Lane was supposedly "miscast" as a face wrestler. She can seem malicious or creepy even when she's flashing a genuinely friendly smile.
• Slut-Shaming: While reigning as a Knockout Tag Team Champion with Gail Kim, Rayne claimed their opponents Tara and Brooke Tessmacher were full of diseases.
• Stalker without a Crush. She had frequently arranged her schedule in hopes it would intersect with Krissy Vaine's, who Lane really wanted a match with. Lane always missed her by a hand breath but Vaine's unavailability is what lead to Rayne joining The Beautiful People, as she was close by and deemed a suitable substitute.
• Stepford Smiler: Seems to be Type C. Angelina Love and Velvet Sky boasted that they turned Madison Rayne into the horrible person she is as they laughed at the fact Brittany and Madison's "relationship" was falling apart.
• Tag Team: Besides with Nevaeh, Amber Lively's team with Lacey Von Erich has been called "Team Beautiful".
  • In her final Impact Wrestling run, Madison Rayne teamed up with Tenille Dashwood in The Influence.
• Tournament Arc: At the OCW Ladies Night Tournament, Lexi Lane defeated ODB to become the first Ohio Championship Wrestling Women's Champion.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Tara and Christie Hemme came to Madison Rayne's aide after she was kicked out of The Beautiful People and became (even more of) a target for them. Rayne in turn betrayed Tara and Christie to get back in Angelina and Velvet's good graces.
• Villain Decay: When Mickie James returned to Impact, he welcome was tough challenge from Madison Rayne, and though Rayne did end having to resort to using a loaded glove to win, she still made James sweat a little before then. In subsequent matches, Rayne was basically helpless against James without the glove, and ended up resorting to using Tara, whom Rayne had formerly retired, to defeat James. The two of them working together again started out as difficult for James as one would expect, they even broke her arm at one point. But after Rayne used Tara to regain the knockouts title belt James showed up to beat them both up at once. Also, James squashed Rayne for the belt while that arm was still in a sling.
• Villain Song: While Rayne herself has had face turns, it's really hard to spin "Killer Queen" as anything but a villain song, given it's a song about breaking hearts for the fun of it, among other things.
• We Used to Be Friends
  • Lane wasn't too happy to find out Nevaeh had betrayed their old friend MsChif, who Lane remained friendly with even after they became opponents in Ring of Honor, to their old enemy Sassy Stephie. Nevaeh in turn accused Lane of betraying ROH and SHIMMER to TNA.
  • Was Gail Kim's best buddy when Kim returned to TNA, but then Madison Rayne went on maternity leave and attacked Kim and Lei'D Tapa upon her return from it.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Defied. After Karen Jarrett was forced to leave the position and named her as the new "Vice President Of The Knockouts", Madison Rayne fired TnT only to be overruled.
• Worthy Opponent: Tracy Brooks. Brooks even called Lane her "best friend" when contrasting her matches with Lane with those against Amy Love, who Lane at one point fought in Brooks's place. ODB and Shantelle Taylor prior to TNA.
• Wrestling Psychology: Lane's technically sound and her offense can be exciting, but her greatest strength in winning fans over is her body language, especially when trying to outwit an opponent.
• You Have Failed Me: Tara's continued presence in TNA was dictated by Madison Rayne after losing the career match. Rayne gave her the ultimatum of destroying Mickie James "or else". Following a match in which Rayne felt James wasn't sufficiently "destroyed"... Tara's job was saved by Mickie of all people.
• You Have Outlived Your Useful Ness: After acquiring the servitude of Tara, Madison Rayne declared she didn't need Velvet Sky or Lacey Von Erich anymore, which lead to her getting ousted from The Beautiful People again as they took Angelina Love back after Rayne attacked Von Erich for losing them a tag match.