They called her Kong, and that wasn’t a nickname—it was prophecy. Kia Stevens walked into locker rooms like a wrecking ball wearing braids and brimstone, the last honest freight train in a business full of soft hands and silk lies. In a sport where beauty queens learned arm drags and called themselves dangerous, Kong was dangerous before she ever stepped through the ropes. She was violence in its Sunday best.
Forget the sequins. Forget the smoky-eyed smiles and spandex spray tans. Kong was sweat and leather and the sound of your jaw unhinging as she slammed you through the canvas like it owed her money. She didn’t want to be your favorite. She wanted to be the reason you turned off the lights and stared at the ceiling for three days wondering where your dignity went.
Born in Carson, California, Stevens didn’t break in through a pretty face or a famous family. She was rejected. Mocked. Jim Ross once told her she was “too fat” to make it. That lit a fire that still burns like an oil drum behind a dive bar. She went to Japan, learned to speak the language, trained with women who hit like hammer-wielding gods. They named her Amazing Kong because “apocalypse” was taken. She didn’t just wrestle in Japan—she belonged there. Like storm clouds belong in the sky.
She was the wrong shape for Vince McMahon’s world, but the perfect shape to tear it down.
Before the U.S. knew her name, she was decapitating people in All Japan Women’s Pro Wrestling and GAEA, teaming with Aja Kong as if the Earth needed two earthquakes at once. They called themselves W Kong. Cute. But nothing was cute about two freight trains barreling through every tag team they faced. She won the WWWA World Single Championship, the AAAW Tag Titles, and scared so many girls out of the dojo you could hear the echoes of her chops on the next continent.
By the time she came back stateside, she didn’t knock on doors—she kicked them off the hinges. Shimmer, Ring of Honor, and the NWA let her in like a wolf wearing human skin. She piled up bodies like trophies. Mercedes Martinez, Cheerleader Melissa, MsChif—they all learned that bumping for Kong felt like hugging a jackhammer. Her matches weren’t technical masterpieces. They were bar fights in ball gowns.
But it was in TNA where the gospel of Kong really got loud. She didn’t debut. She arrived. October 2007—Impact Wrestling. Gail Kim was the queen bee. Kong crushed her like a beer can. That Knockouts Division? She built it. Without her, there is no glory, no renaissance, no revolution. The women’s division in TNA wasn’t taken seriously until Kong powerbombed it into respect. Two-time Knockouts Champion. Knockouts Tag Team Champion. More importantly, she made it real.
She didn’t have 400 catchphrases or reality show charisma. She had one story—“I’m bigger than you, meaner than you, and I’m gonna throw you like garbage.” And fans loved her for it. Because deep down, everybody wishes they could be Kong for a day. Stop smiling. Stop apologizing. Just flatten the next damn obstacle in their way.
But wrestling is a business that eats its children.
She walked out on TNA after a real-life confrontation with Bubba the Love Sponge—yeah, that guy. Kong raised money for Haitian earthquake victims. Bubba said some trash on-air. Kong rearranged his internal organs backstage. TNA suspended her. She asked for her release. They played the corporate fiddle. And in the end, they stripped her of titles and dignity, just like they always do with women who don’t play nice.
WWE saw her next and gave her a name—Kharma. A great one, too, because when Kong walked in, karma came due for every blonde diva who ever coasted by on posing and giggling. She destroyed Michelle McCool. Beat up dolls in vignettes. Looked like the second coming of everything wrestling had been missing. Then she cried in the ring, said she was pregnant, and disappeared.
Life doesn’t care about heat.
Kong miscarried. And when she was ready to return, WWE had already moved on. The circus doesn’t wait for broken hearts or broken bodies. She made one last gasp appearance in the 2012 Royal Rumble, scaring the hell out of Dolph Ziggler and tossing Hunico like yesterday’s trash. That was her only WWE match. History will show she was the third woman to ever enter the men’s Rumble. But legacy isn’t about numbers. It’s about how many people remember the chill in the air when her music hit.
She went back to the indies. Back to Shine, Shimmer, and Resistance Pro. Back to the place where wrestling feels like a church fight with beer breath. She even returned to Japan—said she was done, then came back again. Because monsters don’t retire. They just rest.
AEW gave her one last platform. She showed up in 2019, aligned with Brandi Rhodes in the Nightmare Collective—an angle that crashed harder than a drunk driver at 3 a.m. But it didn’t matter. She’d already done her damage. The girls in the back? Half of them grew up watching her wreck shop. The other half trained to fight like her.
When Kong officially retired in 2021, it wasn’t with fanfare or a five-minute farewell tour. It was a speech. A moment. A thank you. And then she was gone. TNA—Impact—inducted her into their Hall of Fame, one of the few times wrestling did right by its own.
But if you want to understand Kong, don’t look at the belts. Don’t count the wins. Watch the faces of the women she wrestled—some in awe, some in fear, but all of them better for standing across from her.
Kong didn’t ask for respect. She beat it out of the industry, piece by piece.
She was thunder in a leotard. A wrecking ball with a conscience. A monster who bled for this business even when it didn’t deserve her. You don’t build a Mount Rushmore for women’s wrestling without carving her name in stone and making damn sure she’s the one who towers over the rest.
Because in the gospel of Kong, mercy was weakness—and pain was the only sermon that ever made sense.
