FROM SYDNEY TO ST. LOUIS: SHAZZA McKENZIE LEFT BEHIND 'A' GOOD LIFE IN HER NATIVE AUSTRALIA IN THE PURSUIT OF TRUE HAPPINESS
WAS MEANT TO BE “one last hurrah.” So says Shazza McKenzie of her 2022 tour of the American indie circuit, which was chronicled in the two-part IWTV docuseries, Shazza Takes America.
“Every day as a professional wrestler in America is completely different. Every show is different, every match is different, every crowd is different.”
The popular Aussie grappler—a former Heart of SHIMMER champion and longtime fixture of PWI’s women’s rankings—wanted to make up for lost time. After all, pandemic-era travel restrictions had kept her from wrestling abroad for the better part of three years. But that ambitious slate of bookings across the States, exhausting and exhilarating in near-equal measure, would be no farewell tour. Instead, those post-COVID shows strengthened McKenzie’s devotion to professional wrestling … and completely changed her life.
“If anything, the pandemic gave me more time,” McKenzie says. “Because all the nagging injuries that I’d had for Like, ”
