Wrestling / Nikki Cross

The Scottish Superhero

Nicola Glencross (born 21 April 1989) is a Scottish professional wrestler currently signed to WWE under the ring name Nikki Cross, performing on the Raw brand.

Cross previously wrestled on the independent circuit under the ring name Nikki Storm, most notably for Insane Championship Wrestling, Pro-Wrestling: EVE, Scottish Wrestling Entertainment, and SHIMMER Women Athletes. She changed her ring name to Nikki Cross upon signing to WWE in 2016.

In WWE, Nikki adopted the character gimmick of a a psychopathic and unhinged woman. She started out working in NXT as part of the SAnitY stable before all group members except her were drafted to SmackDown in mid-2018, with her staying in NXT as a singles competitor. She was promoted to the main roster at the end of that year, and eventually drafted to Raw in 2019.

From June 2021 to October 2022, Nikki adopted a faux-superhero face persona known as "Nikki A.S.H.^note Almost a Super Hero". At the 2021 Money in the Bank, Nikki won the women's ladder match as A.S.H. and cashed in on Charlotte Flair 24 hours later to become Raw Women's Champion. At the end of October 2022, she reverted to her Nikki Cross persona while interfering in a match between Bayley and Bianca Belair.

Among her in-ring achievements, she is a 3-time WWE Women's Tag Team Champion (holding it twice with Alexa Bliss and once with Rhea Ripley), and both an 11-time WWE 24/7 Champion (holding it 10 times as Nikki A.S.H and once as Nikki Cross) and the title's final champion before it was retired.

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A.S.T. (Almost Superhero Tropes):

• Animal Motifs:
  • She has mannerisms that one would expect more from a playful cat than a psychotic human. She likes to rub her face on things and bat objects around with her hands (usually microphones or title belts), will often gently paw at other people, and sometimes crawls on all fours for no apparent reason.
  • Her former superhero gimmick also had a butterfly-themed costume.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • Ruby Riott. In NXT, they were constantly at each other's throats. On the main roster, Nikki joined forces with Natalya Neidhart and Bayley to fight Ruby and her friends Sarah Logan and Liv Morgan in a Tag Team match despite generally being a Heel and the two of them being faces.
  • Bayley herself for the SmackDown Women's Championship during the latter's reign, as Nikki has been Bayley's constant #1 contender for much of her two reigns.
  • Rhea Ripley, her former tag team partner, who she surprisingly betrayed while still acting as the supposedly heroic Nikki A.S.H. She even has the insistence of declaring Rhea as the villainess of the story, despite clear evidence to the contrary.
• The Artifact: Her original theme, "Glasgow Cross," became this, as it was a Dubstep rendition of SAnitY's theme, "Controlled Chaos." She kept this theme after being separated from the group in 2018 until it was finally replaced in 2020.
• Ax-Crazy: As a member of SAnitY. While everybody in that stable is a bit off, she may be by far the least sane one of the group, which is really saying something. She's been seen (aside from mercilessly beating her opponents) punching, slapping and biting herself, crawling on the floor and snarling like an animal. And that was in and slightly after one five-minute match. Eric Young tried to calm her down (think about the implications of that for a second) and got an elbow to the face for his trouble.
• Badass Boast: When lucid, she declares herself to be "The Best in the Galaxy".
• Battle Couple: Longtime girlfriend and eventual wife of Big Damo/Killian Dain, her fellow stablemate in SAnitY.
• Big Bad Wannabe: In Storm's head she is a giant monster like Amazing Kong, even using Hitler Cam to make herself seem more threatening. She's had a couple run ins with Kong that made her realize she wasn't, but Storm always forgot before long. Or was that concussion induced amnesia?
• The Cape: Her former gimmick as "Nikki A.S.H.", complete with Domino Mask, cape, Leotard of Power and gold tights, along with inspirational promos about how she represents the best in all of us.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Besides being Ax-Crazy, Nikki also has many moments of being just plain old odd. She's often seen squatting and crawling around for no reason, pawing at others, and even saying things that make no sense to anyone besides herself.
• Combat Pragmatist: Nikki knows how to fight dirty and then some. She often traps her opponents between the ring and the ring apron before pummelling them. During Money in the Bank 2019, she grabbed a ladder and spun it around her head like a helicopter in an unorthodox Herd-Hitting Attack.
• Crowd Song: During an angle involving Aleister Black and his attacker, the NXT Universe sang "Nikki's got a secret!" to the tune of "Tazz is gonna kill you!" when she learns of the culprit.
• Cute and Psycho: She can be found smiling like a kid in a candy shop at the violence brought on by her stablemates, commandeering her stablemates for piggyback rides, and, during her sit-down interview, repeatedly batted away the mic and tried to do her interview by walking too close to the camera and holding the mic herself (badly).
• Dark Action Girl: Nikki is equally known for being a Psychopathic Womanchild and for her brutality.
• Dark Is Evil: As part of SAnitY, who is an Ax-Crazy Heel stable whose members are dressed in black.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Keeps wearing her mostly black gears in her Face runs.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Pale-skinned, dark brown hair, and is known for her Ax-Crazy gimmick to match the image!
• Endearingly Dorky: Nikki is absolutely bananas, but in a very endearing way, to the point where she's the one person ever to be able to soften up Alexa Bliss and make her feel affection. At one point, Alexa asks Nikki to host her talk show "A Moment of Bliss" and Nikki does so. When she does, she talks very slowly and explains that she's trying to do her best to make sure she's easily understood, since she knows she has a "bit of an accent." Just to underscore the trope, right at this moment, a man in the audience audibly yells "You're doing great, Nikki!".
• Evil Costume Switch: It took a few months for it to kick in, but following her Face–Heel Turn in early 2022, Nikki A.S.H. traded her blue and yellow costume in favor of a black and gold one, though she also briefly experimented with a black and silver/white look before settling on the aforementioned black and gold.
• Face–Heel Turn: A surprising one as Nikki A.S.H betrayed her former tag team partner Rhea Ripley. She then believes that Rhea was the villain she had to take down, and that people saw her as a hero. As a result, she became a Heroic Wannabe much like Bayley in September 2019.
• Giggling Villain: Her girlish giggle definitely belies her twisted, psychotic, unstable personality. She often switches between this and Laughing Mad at seemingly random times.
• Genki Girl: While in NXT, she comes off more as being completely Ax-Crazy, on the main roster she's just a little weird and extremely hyper. At first, the explanation for this is that she's "socially awkward," but this is soon dropped, and instead the explanation is that Nikki consumes lots and lots of coffee.
• Genre Savvy: One WWE.com exclusive shows her presenting Alexa Bliss with a cake, and not only expecting it to be shoved in her face (because wrestlers and cake never mix well) but welcoming it. After Alexa refuses, she does it herself.
• The Glomp: Nikki is very physically affectionate, and she won't hesitate to show it by aggressively hugging her friends and/or tag-team partners. Exaggerated when she is with Alexa Bliss or Rhea Ripley as Nikki A.S.H.
• Hair-Contrast Duo: With the blonde Alexa Bliss. Nikki's a brawler and power wrestler while Alexa is a refined, speed-oriented and aerial wrestler.
• Happily Married: With Killian Dain on January 17, 2019.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: During one of Oedo~tai's Evil Gloating promos, Storm drew attention that she was wearing leather, "for some reason". They then revealed that a photo shoot was next on their to-do list.
• Heroic Wannabe: Even though Nikki A.S.H underwent a Face–Heel Turn, she insists that she's an Almost a Super Hero, but now to a delirious level of Homelander.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: With Killian Dain, in mixed tag matches as well as real life.
• Laughing Mad: She's unhinged to say the very least, and it really shows when she goes through fits of laughter at either the suffering of others (or herself), or when she laughs at nothing at all.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: The Dark to Alexa Bliss' Light. Nikki is brunette, wears black wrestling gear, has a more rough wrestling style, and generally has a Darker and Edgier career. Alexa has blonde hair, is known for her sparkly motif, and has a more graceful wrestling style.
  • Inverted during her tag team run with Rhea Ripley, after she debuted her Nikki A.S.H. persona, which saw her be the brightly-colored, long-haired Light to the short-haired, black-leather-clad Rhea.
• Literal Ass-Kicking: She started their match by literally kicking Taylor Made's ass at SHINE while Made was condescendingly bowing for the fans.
• Morality Pet: For Alexa Bliss, and it goes both ways. In spite of Alexa's many, many flaws and her shamelessly-unbroken habit of betraying anyone who tries to give her the time of day, she finally seems to have found one of these in Nikki as of 2019, showing considerably more affection toward Nikki than she ever did to her former lackeys and clearly having a legitimate soft spot for her. Perhaps appropriately, it was around the time they became a cohesive unit that Nikki becomes more stable and fans actually started liking Alexa. And as evidenced in the June 19, 2020 edition of SmackDown when Nikki relapsed on her old Ax-Crazy self to attack both Bayley and Sasha Banks, Alexa rushes to the ring and her presence helps Nikki to calm down.
• Naïve Newcomer: When the 2019 Superstar Shake-up occurred, she was conspicuously absent from among the drafts and subsequently from any of the advertising materials on WWE TV. Eventually she showed up on Raw, having abandoned her Ax-Crazy persona because the persona was apparently making it difficult for her to "fit in" backstage (as SAnitY broke up prior to her being moved). The result is that her persona changed to a sweet, innocent babyface character who routinely appears to gets taken advantage of by the resident Alpha Bitch Alexa Bliss. The rest of the locker room has wised up to Alexa's behavior by this point, but Nikki follows the trope. The trope might be averted, however, in that Nikki explains that she knows about Alexa's previous wrongdoings, but supports her as a true friend anyways. Moreover, Alexa has genuinely changed into a sweeter character with Nikki's influence, and her primary accuser Bayley gradually spiraled into evil herself, reversing their dynamic.
• No Sense of Personal Space: She has a habit of literally jumping on the backs of her stablemates. She also likes to hype herself up by slapping the other members of SAnitY in the chest (or sometimes in the face), and she particularly likes to hug Killian Dain after the group dishes out a beatdown (even though she can't even come close to getting her arms around his huge body).
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: She's only 5'1", but she's very solidly built and she hits hard especially when she's in her deranged Nikki Cross persona.
• Power Stable: Oedo~tai in World Wonder Ring ST★RDOM
• Psychopathic Womanchild: She often switches between girlish playfulness and unstable at the drop of a hat. She's also fully capable of being both at the same time.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Nikki is actually a looker with pale white skin and dark brown hair, but her Ax-Crazy gimmick makes it more of a case of Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette.
• The Rival:
  • To Asuka in NXT. She's one of two wrestlers (the other being Ember Moon) to continuously push Asuka to the limit during her historic NXT Women's Championship reign.
  • She's Bayley's constant challenger during the latter's reigns as SmackDown Women's Champion.
• Sanity Slippage: When she made her initial debut, she was perfectly normal. When she reappeared with SAnitY (no pun intended), the commentators were stunned by the change in her personality.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Once she arrives on Raw, she is forced to abandon her Ax-Crazy persona, which also results in her adopting this trope. She basically drops the SAnitY gear in favor of just wearing her own merchandise and a much more "traditional" look. Even her match graphics are changed to represent her as a sweet, smiling naive girl rather than a grungy psychopath, though this is COMPLETELY averted when she competes as her old Ax-Crazy persona which seems to be triggered when competing while being a giggling Genki Girl otherwise, hinting at a rather complex Multiple Personality Disorder gimmick, though this was never expanded on.
• Slasher Smile: This is pretty much her default facial expression. Pain and suffering is fun for her, even when it's her own.
• The Smurfette Principle: The only female member of the stable known as SAnitY.
• Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome: Her first television match was as a cheerful face teaming with Carmella and Liv Morgan. The next time she appeared, she was the most unhinged and violent member of SAnitY with no clue as to what happened to cause the shift.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: She's notably absent when Alexa Bliss got dragged into the Bray Wyatt and Braun Strowman feud which saw Alexa getting Mandible Clawed and Press Slammed by the respective men. Considering the help Nikki could have been during those times, Alexa got mad at her.
• Undying Loyalty: To Alexa Bliss, Nikki's one friend on the main roster and her eventual tag team partner. Initially, while both of them were still either heels or bordering on it, this was played off as Nikki being blissfully ignorant of Alexa's manipulative nature, but as their companionship slowly turned both of them face, Nikki's loyalty to her friend was portrayed as more noble and heroic.
• Use Your Head: A variety of headbutts can be found in her arsenal. Not only does she use regular headbutts from time to time, but she can usually be seen ramming her head into her opponent's midsection. In her pre-WWE period, she would use a diving headbutt (called Hail Storm) as her finishing move.
• Villainous Friendship: While she and Alexa Bliss were heels together. Nowadays it's far more heroic. Even in 2021 with Nikki and Bliss in far different gimmicks, their friendship is intact.
• Villainous Rescue: Her debut on Monday Night RAW involved helping Natalya and Bayley fighting The Riott Squad in a 6-Woman Tag Team match. This was surprising to many, since there had been no build-up or mention of her on the show before she appeared. Why she agreed to help them is unclear, though her past beefs with Ruby Riott were probably a factor.
• Violent Glaswegian: She was born in Glasgow (complete with a very thick accent) and proves to be extremely aggressive in taking the fight to her opponents.

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