Queen of the Ring is a 2025 sports biopic distributed by Sumerian Pictures, written and directed by Ash Avildsen, and starring Emily Bett Rickards, Josh Lucas, Tyler Posey, and Francesca Eastwood. The story follows the life of Mildred Burke, an original pioneer in women’s professional wrestling and the first female athlete to even earn a million dollars in her profession. This film had a strong female empowerment, Rosie the Riveter kind of vibe and it was awesome because it was a true story as well and it felt earned. Mildred was a young, single mom from a small town who in the mid 1930s decided to break through in one of the most male dominated sports at the time, professional wrestling. She had to try extra hard to even be trained by anyone because men weren’t generally willing to train a woman in the sport at the time to begin with, and women’s wrestling was downright illegal in most states at the time. That was until she met the complicated and at times straight up scummy wrestler/promoter turned husband/manager, Billy Wolfe.
I really liked that we explored this era in professional wrestling, I’ve long since thought it would be neat to see a story from the earlier days of professional wrestling. The old days of the territories before television or even earlier, the beginning days at the carnivals, and in this story, we got both of those eras. When Mildred first starting out touring the country with Billy and G-Bill, women weren’t allowed to wrestle one another, so Millie would wrestle men and awe audiences at carnivals all over the country as she became somewhat of a hero to young girls everywhere. That was until Billy started pushing promoters and commissioners of different wrestling organizations to start allowing more women to wrestle one another, becoming the mouthpiece for adding women’s matches to the cards. Some were sold on the idea, but others weren’t so easily swayed, and the ban was only lifted in several states during Mildred’s time wrestling. This added an eclectic collection of classic women’s wrestlers to the film though that big time pro wrestling fans would probably recognize the names of. June Byers, Mae Young, Gladys Gillem, Babs Wingo, Nell Stewart, and more. A lot of recognizable faces throughout this film too, in the wrestling space especially, but even outside of that. Toni Storm and Naomi play women’s wrestlers in the movie, Jim Cornette plays the NWA commissioner, Kelli Berglund from Heels is also in it as a wrestler, as well as Walton Goggins, and Martin Cove from Cobra Kai fame who play commissioners as well. Kind of a who’s who of recognizable faces if you’re a wrestling fan or consume a lot of entertainment like me.
Emily Bett Rickards really brought life and character to Mildred Burke in this movie as well. This felt like a very honored and thoughtful portrayal of a badass woman in history whose story is probably less known than it should be. Francesca Eastwood (daughter of Clint) did a good job as a young Mae Young too, really captured that loose, wild, and not giving an F attitude that was the legend we knew her as. She did a lot for the women around her too and was one of the most outspoken (along with Mildred) when she felt like her or the girls around her were being misled or mistreated. Josh Lucas also did a good job in his role as the big, bad, Billy Wolfe. That character in itself was an awful son of a bitch at times and you really were disgusted by his behavior, but he was also undeniably a pioneer for women’s wrestling in his own right as well and they needed him at a point in time until they were able to break out on their own and make a name for themselves. While being evil and scummy, he was the initial one to open the doors and minds for the concept of women’s wrestling as well, so Lucas did a good job bringing the complicated nature of all that to life.
One thing that was kind of a small complaint of mine was that this story spanned about 20 years all in all and in that time the only one in the movie to seemingly age (because he was the only one with a different actor portraying the young and older versions) was Mildred’s son, Joe. It was a little hard not to notice when at the beginning of the movie he was a little toddler that they were all carrying around and by the end he was a grown man driving and his mom and her friends hadn’t seemingly aged at all. The story really feels like it could’ve played out in miniseries form very well because it did cover such a span of time and I’m sure a lot of the details were kind of glazed over in movie form, even though this movie was around 2 hours and 15 minutes or so. Nonetheless though, I’m happy with what we got here. It feels crazy to think as a wrestling fan of the current product in WWE, just how far we’ve come in women’s wrestling even in the last couple decades but especially spanning all the way to back then, so it’s neat to look back on a classic story with some of the pioneers, and that some of the women of the modern era were able to portray them in this film. I feel like this movie is falling under the radar and that’s kind of a shame, so if you’re a wrestling fan or even a sports movie fan then I’d recommend giving this one a watch. A true American Dream kind of story for a small-town woman conquering a man’s world. It’s currently playing in theaters now so go check it out or if you’re reading this at a later time, look for it on streaming!
