Area woman re­al­izes dream in ring

Bul­lied in high school, Gar­land’s Em­ber Moon re­turns as WWE star

Af­ter she spent 11 years of per­form­ing in a uni­verse where lines be­tween good and evil can cross in­ter­change­ably, it shouldn’t be a sur­prise that the fa­vorite su­per­hero of Gar­land pro­fes­sional wrestler Em­ber Moon is ac­tu­ally a vil­lain.

“Black Adam’s awe­some,” said Moon, who will ap­pear Mon­day night on WWE Raw at Amer­i­can Air­lines Cen­ter — her first home­town ap­pear­ance on the com­pany’s main ros­ter. “His ori­gin story from DC 52 just had me to­tally in love.”

Moon, whose given name is Adrienne Reese, at times was forced to use her love of comic books (she’s also a huge fan of the 1960s Bat­man tele­vi­sion se­ries star­ring Adam West) as well as her love for sports en­ter­tain­ment as an es­cape dur­ing her child­hood.

“I was just bul­lied re­ally bad in school, and my only es­cape was to turn on WWE

Smack­down or Raw,” she said. “Just go into a dif­fer­ent world and see all of these larg­erthan-life char­ac­ters de­fend­ing their ideals — not afraid to de­fend them­selves and stick up for what they be­lieved in.”

Fast for­ward to 2018, and Moon is WWE’s res­i­dent “War God­dess.” Af­ter a few years on NXT, WWE’s de­vel­op­men­tal show, she re­ceived the pro­mo­tion to the bright lights of

Mon­day Night Raw the night af­ter WrestleMa­nia 34 in

April.

“I wres­tled all around here on the in­de­pen­dent cir­cuit. It’s re­ally cool to be able to come in and be like — man, I made it,” Moon, 30, said of her re­turn to North Texas. “My home­town, my fam­ily, my friends, ev­ery­one sees all the hard work and ded­i­ca­tion I put in, and it’s the big­gest pay­off of just ev­ery­thing so far.”

That hard work started at Gar­land Lake­view, where Moon took part in a num­ber of ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties be­fore grad­u­at­ing in 2006. There was ten­nis and soft­ball along with some time run­ning with the math­letes and chess club — in her words, any­thing a per­son un­der 5-2 could get her hands on. She also helped other stu­dents pre­pare for col­lege in Lake­view’s AVID pro­gram.

But her first real love was soc­cer.

“Be­fore I got to high school, I played on a com­pe­ti­tion team for soc­cer for years. That’s the only thing I ever re­ally wanted to do un­til wrestling came into my life,” Moon said. “But re­ally, mid­dle school, it was all about soc­cer for me. It was all about try­ing to go over to the UK and play on a club team there for like Liver­pool or Man City.”

Her true call­ing

But af­ter a se­mes­ter of play­ing at East­field Col­lege, she took a leap of faith and chose her new path in the spring of 2007.

“I just kind of tried it,” Moon said of her first step into train­ing to be­come a sports en­ter­tainer. “I was like, you know what, I bet­ter try it be­cause I don’t want to live with that ‘what if’ for the rest of my life. What if I didn’t try?

“I stayed in school for three or four years af­ter that, too. I just couldn’t find any­thing that I wanted to do in col­lege. I changed my ma­jor ev­ery other week, it seemed like. From ac­count­ing, to vet­eri­nary, to chem­istry. I just couldn’t find any­thing that clicked like this did.”

The switch in ca­reer paths was al­ways in the back of her mind. It was why she stuck with so many dif­fer­ent sports through school. She even be­came a Lake­view cheer­leader to help her­self over­come her shy­ness with the added bonus of learn­ing how to per­form in front of a live au­di­ence.

“It just made me feel happy,” she said, “and it just was like, ‘This is what I’m meant to do for the rest of my life.’”

Strik­ing en­counter

Like most pro wrestlers, Moon stepped into the ring for var­i­ous in­de­pen­dent pro­mo­tions be­fore land­ing with WWE in 2015. Along the way, she met her fu­ture hus­band, Matthew Palmer, also a wrestler. Palmer even pro­posed to Moon in the ring at a live event. They’re set to be mar­ried this fall.

“Her de­fin­i­tive mem­ory of us meet­ing was when we ac­tu­ally had to do a train­ing drill to­gether, and I drop-kicked her in the face,” Palmer said. “And then she hated me for a while.”

“I thought she was gor­geous and awe­some — and then I drop-kicked her in the face. It was the drill. I had to do it.”

Palmer isn’t sure if he’ll be able to make it to Raw in Dal­las. But Moon’s par­ents will be in the seats at AAC, and they will get to see their daugh­ter per­form for the first time since her callup to the main ros­ter.

“They're su­per ex­cited,” said Moon. “There's plenty of peo­ple, some friends who I haven’t seen in years that are go­ing to be able to see me per­form. So, I’m just su­per happy and su­per ec­static about the op­por­tu­nity.”

Op­por­tu­nity has come for Moon at a good time. WWE plans its first all-women’s pay-per-view event Oct. 28 in Union­dale, N.Y., and the com­pany has said all of its fe­male per­form­ers will par­tic­i­pate.

“We all want our name in the his­tory books,” Moon said, “and I want to con­tinue to keep writ­ing ‘Em­ber Moon’ in those slots any­where I can.”

But for the girl who was once bul­lied in school, there is an even higher pur­pose.

“I just want to show peo­ple that it’s OK to be you. That it’s OK to de­fend ev­ery­thing that you want in life to ac­com­plish your dreams no mat­ter what other peo­ple say,” Moon said. “And if I could use my plat­form for that — to help push the Be A Star pro­gram, to help the anti-bul­ly­ing which I’m a huge ad­vo­cate of. … That’s my main goal.”

WWE

Gar­land’s Adrienne Reese, who wres­tles pro­fes­sion­ally un­der the name Em­ber Moon, is one of World Wrestling En­ter­tain­ment’s ris­ing stars. She’ll be among the per­form­ers on Raw on Mon­day night at Amer­i­can Air­lines Cen­ter.

File Photo

Reese (left) was in­volved in many ac­tiv­i­ties at Gar­land Lake­view. In 2004, she helped class­mate San­dra Col­unga with an SAT prac­tice test.