It’s still too early to confirm, but a recent Tweet from Scottish indie wrestler Kay Lee Ray following her defeat this past Sunday at ICW‘s Fear & Loathing X, in which she lost her ICW Women’s Championship to Kasey Owens, has some speculating that she may be joining another former ICW Champion, Joe Coffey, and departing the company. ICW released a match-up announcement that new ICW Women’s Champ Owens would be facing Viper (aka Piper Niven in the WWE’s Mae Young Classic) at ICW’s December 10th taping for ICW Fight Club. Kay Lee Ray mentioned that she would not be seeking a rematch, claiming that she previously claimed she’d leave the ICW women’s division if she lost the title at Fear and Loathing X and she’s sticking to it.
There is no rematch for me…
I said if I lost the @InsaneChampWres Woman's title at #ICWHydro that I'd be stepping away from the division.
— 🏴🔥 (@wwe_alba) November 23, 2017
While there’s always a chance that Kay Lee Ray could simply be stepping away from the division and remaining with ICW for intergender tag matches, it seems odd a women’s wrestler would remain in a promotion if she could no longer compete for the women’s title, although ICW could always have Kay Lee Ray compete for one of the other ICW titles, such as the Zero G or Tag Team.
An 8-year veteran of the UK indies, she began in the Scottish Wrestling Alliance (SWA) in 2009 and has been a regular with ICW since 2010. During the past few years, Ray has appeared for multiple promotions around the world including Stardom in Japan, SHIMMER and SHINE in the United States, and multiple UK promotions including PROGRESS, Southside Wrestling Entertainment (SWE), Pro Wrestling EVE, and Fight Club: PRO. She even worked matches for Impact Wrestling during their UK tours, teaming up with WWE Superstar Noam Dar to defeat Gail Kim and Rampage Brown on an episode of TNA Xplosion back in 2015. Throughout her wrestling career, she’s a 2x ICW Women’s Champion, 2x SWE Queen of Southside Champion, and the SWA Scottish Women’s Champion. She also competes for WCPW (now Defiant Wrestling), where she’s the current reigning Women’s Champion. She gained huge national exposure this past summer as one of the participants in the WWE Mae Young Classic, where she was knocked out in the first round by Mexico’s Princess Sugehit. Previously, she appeared on NXT in an enhancement role in 2015, losing to Nia Jax.
The tweet comes days after former ICW World Heavyweight Champion Joe Coffey also bid farewell to ICW, causing some to speculate that they may be bound for a more major promotion, ranging from NXT to NJPW to Impact Wrestling.
While this could just be storyline – Ray still works in Japan with Stardom, so could just be departing temporarily to work abroad for a bit – the timing with Coffey’s news seems to have hit a nerve with UK BritWres fans, amid reports that WWE’s new UK wrestling series may be closer to realization that ever before.
