In the chaotic scrapbook that is early 2000s wrestling, there are some names that pop up like Polaroids of forgotten fever dreams — wild gimmicks, bizarre factions, and wrestlers who somehow turned pure chaos into a career. Enter Simply Luscious, born Veronica Carrejo, known to some as Nurse Veronica, to others as Ronnie Stevens, and to the rest of us as the ballerina-turned-brawler who made catfights into main events and chaos into currency.
At 5’6″ and 130 pounds, hailing from San Antonio, Texas, Simply Luscious wasn’t just another pretty face thrown into the blender of wrestling’s golden age of absurdity. She was the only woman to graduate from Shawn Michaels’ Texas Wrestling Academy — and that’s not hyperbole. While the boys (Bryan Danielson, Paul London, Brian Kendrick) were busy chain wrestling and flipping through drills, Luscious was out there trading ballet slippers for dropkicks and stiff elbows.
Jim Cornette would’ve loved her pedigree and hated everything else. Bobby Heenan would’ve just leaned in and said, “She’s Simply Luscious? Well, that’s better than ‘Moderately Appealing.’” But both would’ve had to admit — she made herself matter, even if the business kept trying to box her into eye-candy roles or “crazy catfight” sideshows.
She debuted in 2000, squaring off with Chris Marval in San Antonio. The name “Simply Luscious” came courtesy of her then-husband, hockey player Ryan Pisiak — which may be the first time in wrestling history that a gimmick was inspired by someone who thought “slashing” was a love language. Not long after, she made a brief appearance in WCW, where Tank Abbott — human meatball and legitimate psycho — concussed her in a segment that barely made sense at the time and aged like unrefrigerated shrimp.
But the independents? That’s where Luscious thrived.
In 2002, she showed up in Ring of Honor — the gritty proving ground for wrestlers who didn’t want to wear glitter but wanted to prove they could go. She joined The Prophecy, led by the cerebral Christopher Daniels, before turning on the group to side with Steve Corino’s faction in a little Shakespearean swerve that would’ve made Vince Russo dizzy with jealousy. At Final Battle, she even notched a win over a young Alexis Laree — who the world would later know as Mickie James.
Then came Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, the asylum of the early 2000s. TNA was where logic went to die and entrance music often lasted longer than matches. It’s also where Simply Luscious took on her most infamous persona: Nurse Veronica, the backstage clinician who doubled as the leader of Bitchslap — a stable so controversial and chaotic, it made Right to Censor look like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Let’s pause on the name: Bitchslap. That wasn’t an insult hurled on commentary — that was the official name of the stable. It was part feminist uprising, part sorority hazing ritual, and all ridiculous. The storyline? Traci Brooks demanded equal rights for female wrestlers. TNA responded by pairing her with men who beat the hell out of her, then giving her a lifeline in the form of Nurse Veronica. The two formed a tag team, issued open challenges, and went to war with — wait for it — TNA’s cage dancers, Lollipop and April Pennington.
That’s right. Professional dancers in cages became storyline wrestlers. Every week was a backstage brawl, a half-match, or a “catfight” broken up by security before it got too real. It was the kind of angle where the crowd didn’t chant “this is awesome” — they just whooped like they were at a frat party and someone brought out the whipped cream.
Luscious played it straight-faced the whole way, even leading the team after Brooks was written out. She brought in Cheerleader Valentina as a partner, then Trinity as backup muscle. For a brief shining moment, she led the most talked-about (and arguably most reviled) women’s faction in the company. She even picked up a win over Daizee Haze in a match where the loser had to wear a diaper — because this was TNA, and of course it ended like that.
The storyline eventually collapsed under the weight of its own insanity — mostly because TNA ran out of women to feed to the stable. And when they offered Luscious a two-year deal, she declined. She wasn’t here to be eye candy. She was here to wrestle — or at least raise hell on her terms.
After TNA, Luscious returned to the indies like a woman possessed. She beat Sumie Sakai in 2004 to win the USA Pro Women’s Championship. She took her act to Mexico, where she worked for CMLL, and then to Japan’s Zero-One, playing a corrupt referee gimmick that had “heat magnet” written all over it. This wasn’t a nostalgia tour. This was a woman grinding in the shadows while the big companies figured out how to package women’s wrestling without the word “bra” attached.
In 2006, she returned to Shawn Michaels’ Texas Wrestling Academy to prep for a WWE tryout. They passed. That was their mistake. Luscious went right back to the grind — working for Women’s Extreme Wrestling, feuding with a wrestler named PINK across River City Wrestling and OWE, winning the OWE Women’s Championship, and snatching the CWF Women’s Title in 2009 by defeating Claudia Del Solis.
There was no Hall of Fame ring. No WrestleMania moment. No last ride. Just a legacy carved out one indie ring at a time, from Texas to Tokyo, with more bruises than breaks.
Simply Luscious was everything her name wasn’t: tough, technical, serious. Sure, the gimmick started as cheesecake. But what she became — a respected vet, a faction leader, an in-ring grinder — was anything but fluff.
Jim Cornette would’ve said, “She had the tools, the training, and the guts. She didn’t get pushed because the business was too busy selling thongs instead of holds.”
Heenan would’ve deadpanned, “She’s simply luscious? I’ve been called worse by better.”
But both would’ve agreed: she belonged.
In a business that eats women alive and leaves them forgotten before the canvas dries, Simply Luscious stuck around, kept swinging, and left her mark on every ring that dared book her.
Because she wasn’t just eye candy. She was a problem.
And the business needed more problems like her.