Chelsea Green is ‘shattering glass ceilings’ on her way to becoming the first WWE women’s U.S. champion

Women’s professional wrestling has completely transformed from the days of lingerie matches and sideshow spectacles.

WWE in particular has evolved a great deal since ditching the Divas championship in 2016 and replacing it with the Women’s Championship, adding even more titles to the division and giving women more storylines on live television.

WWE superstar Chelsea Green saw this as a new opportunity.

On Dec. 14, Green defeated Michin to become the first WWE women’s United States champion. Green was well aware of the history she was making.

“As your first-ever United States women’s champion and Lyra as your first ever intercontinental champion, that’s just another glass ceiling that we’ve shattered,” Green said. “I’m excited to go into 2025 and see what else is coming our way because sometimes we’re shattering glass ceilings that we didn’t even know existed or that we could shatter.”

Now, Green will look to continue her reign as she battles Michin once again in a street fight Friday at the Wells Fargo Center.

“It’s such a special city for wrestling, for hardcore wrestling, especially,” Green said. “So for me to now be going into a street fight in Philly, I don’t think there’s a more perfect city to host.”

Before her match, she took the time to reflect on her journey to becoming a champion.

How to become a WWE superstar?

This was a question that could be found in Green’s Google search history while she was studying kinesiology at the University of Calgary. As she was doing her homework and watching Nikki Bella take on Naomi in 2015, the future superstar decided it finally was time to train in the sport she fell in love with at an early age.

In fourth grade, Green remembers sneaking upstairs with her sister to watch wrestling while their parents weren’t looking. That love continued into 10th grade when she watched Kelly Kelly wrestle Beth Phoenix in person.

“We just loved the dramatics of it, the storylines of it,” Green said. “I was doing my homework and I thought, ‘Damn. They’re so hot and they’re so aggressive and they’re so bad [expletive].’ At that moment I was like, ‘You can be a bad [expletive] and you can be beautiful. You can be a little bit of everything,’ and it was just displayed on that TV screen for me. So I Googled ‘How to be a WWE diva,’ and the rest is history.”

Green traveled across the world performing in promotions, including TNA, NWA, Ring of Honor, Lucha Underground, and Stardom World of Japan.

After touring Japan in 2016, Green started making more appearances in the U.S. She recalls struggling as she moved between Canada and the U.S. for multiple years.

“It’s so hard for a talent from the outside of America to make it in America because we need visas and we need work permits, and to get those things you need a resumé,” Green said.

“It’s kind of just a vicious circle. It’s very, very hard, but it took me a few years before I acquired my first work visa and thank God for WWE and being hired on Tough Enough. That was kind of the catalyst of my career because it jump-started that resumé.”

Tough Enough was a professional wrestling reality show produced by the WWE with participants competing for a WWE contract. Green competed on the sixth season of the relaunched series and finished in fourth place among the female participants.

“It was such a wide variety of emotions because I was the only independent female wrestler on the show,” Green said. “So I felt like I deserved something. I felt like I deserved respect and that I deserved to go far, but that’s not how show business works. That’s not how reality TV works. It’s not how the WWE works.

“I learned the hard way that just being independent wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I needed more. I needed a je ne sais quoi. … It just forced me to step outside of my comfort zone and forced me to become a wrestler.”

Green remembers when she heard the news that the WWE was bringing in another belt for the women’s division. She found out like all of the fans did.

“Whoever was going to win this championship, I just knew it was special,” Green said. “It’s a moment in history that we cannot take away from whoever gets to win this championship. It’s another storyline for the women. It’s another segment that we can have and be put on live television and that’s very exciting to me.”

Little did she know that she would be the one rewriting history. On Dec. 14, on Long Island — in the hometown of her husband, Matt Cardona — in front of her family and in-laws, Green won the title. The milestone came almost 10 years after getting kicked off Tough Enough.

“I couldn’t have dreamt of a better crowd,” Green said. “They were in it from start to finish. That, to me, was the greatest moment of my career. … I’m just honored that someone felt I was worthy of holding this championship and writing a little piece of history for WWE.”

Green and Michin have shared the ring dating back to a 2016 episode of TNA Xplosion from Bethlehem. It was Green’s second singles match in the United States, and she walked off in defeat.

“We have been like this our whole career,” Green said. “We’ve just been kind of chasing each other’s tails for 10 years, and I think that’s really special and it doesn’t happen a lot. A lot of people go their separate ways, and you don’t get to reconnect for years, but we have been in the same companies for 10 years, and that’s very special. And so every time that we get in the ring, we kind of have an unspoken bond and almost like a little bit of wrestling telepathy.

“From Day 1, the minute I stepped in that ring for the very first time in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, we had chemistry, and I trusted her and she trusted me. That bond has just grown.”

But as Green prepares to take on Michin once again at the Wells Fargo Center, she’s only looking forward to one thing.

“Beating the ever-living crap out of her and maybe never having to wrestle her again,” she said.