Previously known as simply “Michelle” on the Australian wrestling scene, Michelle K. Hasluck found that competing with the likes of Candice Michelle and Michelle McCool on the “Michelle name front” wasn’t cutting it for her. As one of the last Haslucks left in the world, Michelle now wrestles under her real name and couldn’t be prouder.
Her wrestling career started by chance – in 2002, she’d made a trip down to Melbourne from the western side of Australia, Perth, to check out a WWE live event. Strangely, it was actually here, miles from home, that she met local wrestlers for the first time, and learned that Explosive Pro Wrestling (EPW) had a training facility not far from her home in Perth. She began training as soon as she flew home.
Still the only female to have gone through the EPW training facility, the aptly named The Dynamite Factory, Michelle’s first match was in 2003 against a male wrestler by the name of Devlin Reeves. Although it was only in front of around thirty people, Hasluck still counts the match as one of her favourites, and describes the moment when her trainer Davis Storm stepped into the ring post-match to congratulate her as “very special”.
Her first main show appearance after that was at the 2003 EPW ReAwakening event – a big step-up from her first match, in that she was now working in front of over 500 people! – and this time in a rumble match.
In the years that have followed, she has honed her craft by training with many well-known wrestlers and at different wrestling facilities around the country – Davis Storm and Tyler Jacobs at EPW; George Julio (who also boasts SHIMMER’s Kellie Skater as one of his students) in Melbourne; with Lobo, Enforcer and Jay Andrews at PWA Melbourne; and Snakepit Pro Wrestling in Adelaide. The likes of Mick Foley, William Regal, JBL and Stone Cold Steve Austin have all also influenced her more power/brawler style of wrestling – Michelle finishes off her opponents with an Emerald Fusion-like maneuver called the ‘Hasluck Drop’. Other moves in her arsenal include a double under-hook DDT and a top rope leg drop.
Over the years, Hasluck has also acted as a manager for many wrestlers – Bobby BadBlood and Chris J. Lazareth as the tag-team “G$T” (who eventually would go on to become EPW tag-team champions), as well as Champagne Pyro in PWA Melbourne, Big Mike in Swan Hill and Adelaide, and many more. When pressed on her biggest accomplishments, she lists having won the All Action Wrestling Australia Women’s Championship belt from Imogen Jane in 2009 (a title which she held for several months) and being voted as Best Women’s Wrestler in Western Australia a few years ago as two of her proudest. She also appeared in Jenna Dwyer’s “Fight Like A Girl” music video in January 2011 – a video that featured other Australian women’s wrestling talent such as Vixsin and Niki Nitro.
Michelle is also one of the main figureheads behind a new, all-female company called Ladies of Australian Wrestling (LAW) and hopes to see the company expand to other states, and the girls receive the exposure she feels they deserve. She would one day also like to make her way to Europe to train, citing herself as a massive fan of the way they work.
Michelle is currently out of action, pregnant with her first child due in October (Diva Dirt extends our congratulations to her!) but she predicts that she will be back in the ring by the end of the year.
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