Can Plum native Thea Hail bring home the belt?

Plum native Thea Hail, real name Madison Knisley, approaches one of the most important days of her life as she takes on Roxanne Perez for the NXT Women’s Championship Tues., July 30.

Perez won the title on April 6, 2024 at Stand & Deliver, but Hail wants to end her reign. At just 20 years old, a win would make her the second youngest NXT Women’s Champion of all time.

Hail has been training for this moment and is getting ready physically and mentally for the bout. She knows that Perez likes to play mind games and likes to get into the head of her opponent, but Hail is ready for the challenge, taking on the best of the best in NXT.

“I'm very enthusiastic, very energetic, and very unhinged,” Hail tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “I need to take a moment just to breathe and think a little bit more on this match and have a game plan, more so than I normally do. I'm very spastic. I got to go in a little focused and get my head in the game.”

This will be Hail’s third NXT title match since making her debut in 2022 against Ivy Nile. Hail has a lot of experience under her belt for such a young age, but her success in wrestling didn’t happen overnight.

Hail was a senior at Plum and says that she had a quarter life crisis. She had no idea what she wanted to do, but one night, she had an epiphany.

“I quit gymnastics, I quit cheer,” Hail remembers. “I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life, and I was just scrolling through Instagram, and I always follow[ed] WWE. I always thought it was amazing, but I never really thought it was a thing you could do. I saw this video of Rey Mysterio, and I just put my phone down, and went, ‘I'm doing that.’”

Hail grew up watching ’80s wrestling reruns with her father. After seeing the video, she ran down the stairs down to the basement to tell her father. Hail told him that she was going to do it. Her father was elated to hear the news.

“He found me a training school in Pittsburgh called the Stronghold Training Center, and then that was combined with the Iron City Wrestling Academy, and I trained at both of those schools,” Hail tells City Paper. “I ended up landing a dark [non-televised] match for AEW after having a seminar with QT Marshall, and I wrestled Thunder Rosa, and she got me in contact with a recruiter from WWE.”

Hail was just 18 and two days old when she took on Thunder Rosa in AEW. That night, the WWE had her in the system for wrestlers who wanted to try out.

The WWE then invited her down for a tryout at the Performance Center in Orlando in December of 2021. It was a three-day tryout, and on the first and second day, they worked on conditioning, along with explosivity, vertical jumps, and other combine workouts.

On the third day, they had matches and promos, and Hail went up against Charlotte Renegade, someone she was familiar with on the independent scene.

Hail says that tryout week was the craziest week of her life.

“That was the first time I was by myself for that long and in a hotel,” she tells CP. “I was 18. I barely could check into the hotel … It was very crazy for me, but the coaches were just so encouraging. I think we have the best set of coaches ever here. But it was such a cool atmosphere, because we had a mix of indie workers and athletes, and I think each person brought a different energy to that building.”

A few weeks later, Hail got the call. She says that she was “hyped up,” by the WWE and then offered the contract.

Hail dropped what she was doing and followed her dream. She was going to become a WWE superstar — all while still finishing high school online. She mentions, being grateful for the teachers that helped her through it all.

In 2022, Hail graduated high school from Plum. She then wanted this incorporated into wrestling in some way. NXT responded with the perfect idea, one Hail was very surprised to hear.

“‘We're gonna have you graduate, and then you're gonna pick a college, but you're going to pick Chase U as your college,’” she remembers them saying, “and I don't know why, but I never put one and two together. I'm graduating high school. Let me go to the wrestling College we have here,” Hail says. “It was the most wonderful idea I've ever heard. This is the most creative thing and it's straightforward.”

Hail then joined “Chase U,” with Andre Chase and Duke Hudson, a stable in NXT that mimics a wrestling University.

Not everyone can say that their faction members are their best friends, but Hail considers Hudson and Chase to be her older brothers. She also mentions their experience, as Hudson started wrestling when Hail was three years old and Chase began wrestling when she was five.

“They just have so much knowledge from just so many different places,” Hail says. “Duke is from Australia. Chase was in Ring of Honor for a while where he tagged with his brother. They have an array of different accolades and different people they've learned from, and different things that they know. They've been so hands on with just helping me grow as a wrestler. I'm just lucky I have that.”

Chase U took home the tag titles at Halloween Havoc in 2023. Hail was proud of her partners and she says she cried whenever they took home the gold. She says it was evidence that their hard work for many years really paid off and that it was surreal.

Hail wants to bring the NXT Women’s title to the faction.

“The whole overarching message of Chase U is just never settle and always strive to be better than you were yesterday,” Hail says. “Even if I get the title, I want to be able to sit and be a fighting champion, and I want to be able to prove that I got it, and that I can keep it and also show everyone that I appreciate their support.”

Hail now takes on Perez on Tuesday and will leave it all in the ring. Her goal is to target her arm and finish her with the Kimura lock, which is a submission that targets the shoulder and elbow joints. She wants nothing more than to win.

“Coming from competitive sports and everything, you want to win,” Hail says. “You want to win. You have that competitive edge. You want to be able to say, ‘hey, I did that,’and I think I get underestimated when it comes to this sometimes. ‘Oh, you’re younger, you're shorter, you're smaller.’ Yeah, but I put the work in, I put the heart in.”

She also wants to win it for all the kids watching at home and show that there is hope no matter what obstacle is thrown your way.

Despite all the fame, she will always remember her origins with her first trainers, Brandon K and Chris LeRusso.

“He [Brandon] walked me through everything,” Hail says. “He did everything he could to make me as prepared as possible for anything that was thrown at me. I can’t put into words to have somebody like that coming into this business.”

Lastly, she mentions how blessed she is to have two parents and a younger sister who care.

“They really did prepare me well for life. They made sure I was very independent. I can call them any time and they're down here in an instant. That means a lot … I have a younger sister, too, and she just supported me so much.”