{"id":14374,"date":"2018-02-17T21:28:52","date_gmt":"2018-02-18T02:28:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/?p=14374"},"modified":"2018-02-17T21:28:52","modified_gmt":"2018-02-18T02:28:52","slug":"andnew-rhia-oreilly-wins-xwa-heavyweight-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2018\/02\/17\/andnew-rhia-oreilly-wins-xwa-heavyweight-championship\/","title":{"rendered":"#AndNEW: Rhia O&#8217;Reilly Wins XWA Heavyweight Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>UK promotions <strong>XWA (X Wrestling Alliance)<\/strong> and <strong>Pro Wrestling EVE<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/lastwordonprowrestling.com\/2018\/01\/24\/xwa-pro-wrestling-eve-announce-card-fair-fights\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">teamed up for a WrestleFriends event tonight called <em><strong>Equal Fights<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, that pitted some of the top male and female UK talents against each other in intergender match ups. One match featured XWA Heavyweight Champion <strong>Cara Noir<\/strong> (formerly <strong>Tom Dawkins<\/strong>) against former 2x Pro Wrestling EVE Champion <strong>Rhia O&#8217;Reilly<\/strong>, and O&#8217;Reilly pulled off the upset, becoming the new XWA Heavyweight Champion, marking the first time in the promotions history that a women&#8217;s wrestler has held the company&#8217;s top title. The XWA Heavyweight title traces back to 1999, and <strong>Frontier Wrestling Alliance<\/strong> &#8211; XWA emerged as the successor to FWA when FWA lost a promotional war with <strong>IPW:UK<\/strong> and was forced to dissolve in 2007. The XWA\/FWA Heavyweight title has been held by such men as <strong>Christopher Daniels, Doug Williams, Robbie Brookside, Alex Shane, Rockstar Spud<\/strong> (now <strong>Drake Maverick<\/strong> on <em><strong>205 Live<\/strong><\/em>) and <strong>Big Damo<\/strong> (now <strong>Killian Dain<\/strong> in NXT).<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/ProWresLand\/status\/964923058166358016<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Insanely happy to see Rhia O\u2019Reilly as the new XWA Champion! <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/EjwOvlDM5N\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/EjwOvlDM5N<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/xEPJ2ru3QB\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/xEPJ2ru3QB<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; part sophia. part spiritfarer. \ud83d\udc96\ud83d\udc9c\ud83d\udc99 (@distortthecode) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/distortthecode\/status\/964925121659056129?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">February 17, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/ProWrestlingEVE\/status\/964951337858461702<\/p>\n<p>The 32-year old from Belfast, Northern Ireland, has been wrestling for eight years. Rhia O&#8217;Reilly turned to pro wrestling after growing bored with university life back in 2009. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.co.uk\/danny-stone\/rhia-oreilly_b_13572784.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">As she told Huffington Post in 2016<\/a>, she &#8220;moved to England, went to university and didn&#8217;t know what I wanted to do with my life so I handed in my notice at my job and said &#8216;Hey, I love working here but I&#8217;m going to move to Canada and become a professional wrestler&#8217;. They laughed at me but that&#8217;s what I did. I went to Canada and trained with <strong>Lance Storm<\/strong> and loved it.&#8221; When she returned to the UK, she continued training with <strong>Paige<\/strong>&#8216;s family, the Knights, at <strong>WAW<\/strong> and nearly immediately began a now 8-year relationship with <strong>Pro Wrestling EVE<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14379\" src=\"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2018\/02\/de6c639e0406e880c7d36ce7896c225e-florida-wrestling-e1518920727208.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"401\" height=\"600\"><\/p>\n<p>Rhia O&#8217;Reilly also made her impact abroad as well, wrestling for <strong>SHIMMER<\/strong> since 2011, as well as <strong>SHINE<\/strong>. She&#8217;s also made the rounds of most major UK promotions, such as <strong>PROGRESS, ICW, RevPro, SWE<\/strong>, and <strong>IPW:UK<\/strong>. But just as her star and stock were about to explode, she suffered a major setback in the early 2017 &#8211; she broke her leg and ankle during a brutal hardcore Pro Wrestling EVE Championship defence against <strong>Sammi Jayne<\/strong> at <em><strong>XWA 46<\/strong><\/em> in March. Though she finished the match (and won), she was forced to relinquish her title shortly after, and missed almost the entire year healing from her injuries. She only just returned to the ring this past December. But it looks like she&#8217;s picking right back up where she left off, taking no prisoners, and this time she&#8217;s taking titles from anyone and everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UK promotions XWA (X Wrestling Alliance) and Pro Wrestling EVE teamed up for a WrestleFriends event tonight called Equal Fights, that pitted some of the top male and female UK talents against each other in intergender match ups. One match featured XWA Heavyweight Champion Cara Noir (formerly Tom Dawkins) against former 2x Pro Wrestling EVE [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":649,"featured_media":14378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,13,317],"tags":[2212,2057,2059,2061,2058],"class_list":["post-14374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-international","category-women","tag-cara-noir","tag-equal-fights","tag-pro-wrestling-eve","tag-rhia-oreilly","tag-xwa"],"modified_by":"Jamie Greer","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}