WWE Superstar Kayden Carter’s long blond locs with colorful rainbow strands intertwined and her ever-changing neon eye contact lenses draw attention when she enters the wrestling ring.
Despite being only 5-feet-2, Carter’s charisma, grit and ingenuity in the ring have earned her a spot on the main WWE Raw roster. In the last few months, Carter has earned a WWE Women’s Tag Team championship with fellow Superstar Katana Chance and a spot in the Royal Rumble, a WWE marquee pay-per-view event. As a newer member of WWE’s main roster, Carter hopes she will get to compete in WrestleMania, WWE’s biggest event of the year. This year’s edition will take place Saturday and Sunday.
Before embarking on a pro wrestling career, Carter, whose birth name is Allyssa “Lacey” Lane, was an accomplished basketball player at Shaw University, a historically Black college in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Carter, a junior college transfer from Monroe Community College in New York, spent two years at Shaw, from 2010-2012. She was the starting point guard for the Bears and recorded a team-high six steals when the team defeated Ashland University 88-82 to win the NCAA Division II national title in 2012.
“She was always just a go-getter,” said Shaw women’s basketball coach Jacques Curtis. “One of the things that I definitely remember [is] in the national championship game, she turned the ball over and she saw me getting somebody off that bench to come get her. She went and got that ball back, and she took it back from the girl. So I left her in the game. That’s her personality – she had no quit.”
Carter finished her collegiate basketball career with two Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association tournament titles, two Elite Eight appearances, two Final Four appearances and the national title. Though she is now competing professionally in a different sport, Curtis can still see the athleticism in Carter he saw more than a decade ago.
“I think some of the athleticism comes from playing basketball. I think her heart and how hard she goes after it, you can see that anytime she’s wrestling,” Curtis said. “Wrestling to me is showmanship, and she had showmanship when she played basketball. … It fits a personality.
“Lacey always had some tattoos – I think she just got more tattoos now. Lacey always had some type of hairstyle, and so to me Lacey’s being allowed to be who she is as a woman now. [She’s] flamboyant.”
Carter began her wrestling career in 2016, training at Team 3D Academy of Professional Wrestling run by WWE Hall of Fame tag team Bubba Ray Dudley and D-Von Dudley. A year later, in 2017, Carter auditioned for the WWE and was offered a development contract, but the offer was pulled after she failed a physical. During the exam, doctors discovered one of her legs had a slight bend and wouldn’t lie flat.
“I didn’t know my leg was not straight,” Carter said. “I played a whole collegiate career with my leg, however it was, so I never knew [anything] was wrong. I was like, ‘I don’t want this to be over,’ so I found two sports medicine places and was like, ‘We need to get my leg straight.’ ”
She spent the next few months in physical therapy to straighten her knee and maintained contact with the WWE. Carter further developed her skills by wrestling in Mexico on the independent circuit, and once she was healthy after physical therapy she officially re-signed with the WWE in July 2018.
As a member of NXT, WWE’s developmental brand, Carter won the NXT Women’s Tag Team title with Katana Chance, becoming the longest-reigning tag team champions in title history. After earning a spot on the main WWE Raw roster in June 2023, Carter’s high-flying abilities were highlighted in a tag team matchup with Chance against former UFC star and WWE women’s champion Ronda Rousey.
Carter, who is African American and Filipino, has learned to embrace her uniqueness and be unapologetically herself after years of disrespect from people making her feel bad about who she is. She hopes to inspire others to take pride in themselves.
“There’s not a lot of people that look like me,” Carter said. “I have all the odds [against her] being tatted, having dreads, having colorful eyebrows and being multiracial. Like, there’s a lot of things that I have that is way different than a lot of other people, and I’m really trying to promote that.”
Carter spoke with Andscape about how her basketball career helped prepare her for wrestling, what it’s like tag-teaming with former collegiate athlete Chance and how she is preparing for WrestleMania, the biggest WWE event of the year.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did your collegiate basketball career help you transition into professional wrestling?
People don’t realize how much goes into the whole process of stuff. You have to be coordinated, athletic. You have to be able to protect yourself while protecting someone else. You have to be able to reach the people, you have to be a whole personality.
Playing all those sports [and] getting coordinated, my footwork was great from being a ballerina. I was quick on my feet from track. I was really agile from basketball [and] I was a leader. In basketball, I learned how to work as a team, play well with others, but you also need to learn how to step up for yourself. So honing all of those skills together was really exceptional for me. I knew nothing [coming in], but because of how hard I worked and because of all the different sports I played, it helped to transition me in easily.
How long have you had your signature locs? What’s the inspiration behind locing your hair?
The story behind that is hilarious. But it’s been seven years, seven years or eight years. I remember I had orange curly hair. I dyed my hair all kinds of crazy colors. But at the time it was orange, and I remember Bubba Ray [Dudley] sitting in front of me and being like, ‘You don’t look like you’re WWE.’ He’s like, ‘You look like you’re maybe a Ring of Honor [wrestler],’ something like that. And I just remember being like, ‘Oh, hold up.’ And I remember going to go get my dreads and just being like, ‘OK, we’re doing it.’
I was scared, terrified, because when you have curly hair you love your hair. You love the natural hair. When he said that, I was like, ‘You know what? We got to make a change.’ I went and got me some blond dreads, and he was like, ‘This is it. Yes, I see it.’ I was like, ‘OK, we’re here.’ So that’s how that all spiraled down.
I’ve been eight years strong. … I would never cut, brush, comb [the locs out] because I feel like my idol Lisa Bonet, and I was like, I need to be like her, with the glorious face [and] long dreadlocks.
How much of who you are and your real personality is reflected in your WWE persona?
Everyone thinks the party gimmick is you’re just out all the time having fun drinking or whatever, and that’s not what partying for me is about. For me, it’s about bringing people together. I love dancing and I like being out, because it’s therapeutic to me. It helps me to relax and just forget about any stress that I have. The party [gimmick] means that anyone of any race, of any culture, of anything can come together and really just unify and just be one and find their happy place. The determination that I tried to show is who I am. I’m a spitfire. I think I’m 6-foot-2 and 250 [pounds]. I feel like a lot of that personality does show because that’s me in real life. The attitude, the sass and the fire I give is really me.
As two former collegiate athletes, how have you and Katana Chance built in-ring chemistry over the last few years?
We are completely opposite. We are not the same whatsoever. I’m talking about she’s really nice, and I’m semi-nice. … To able to create something special, it’s been a process, and it’s been nice having someone there to really just have your back and be there when you feel like giving up or when you feel like celebrating. It’s so magical to have another person. … I feel very blessed to be able to share it with someone because it’s like they feel you in the moment.
We nail [moves] because we know each other. I know her like the back of my hand, and she knows me like the back of her hand. … We go and we practice and I make sure that she feels comfortable in all the stuff that we want to do or try. … We have really worked hard to make that jump up to the main roster and take it to another level because we just want the world to know what we’re really capable of.
What was it like winning the NXT Women’s Tag Team title?
It’s been a whirlwind. … Everyone followed our journey from Year 1 to Year 4, and when we won it was like, “Damn! Finally!” Everyone was so supportive. I just remember how loud the crowd was and how happy and, like, everyone was just so lit. And from there we learned a lot in ways to carry ourselves. So our mentality just kept getting higher and higher … and we keep pushing.
WrestleMania is coming up. How have you been working and preparing for it?
I want to say just be more efficient. I don’t want to say it’s only because of WrestleMania season, but WrestleMania season is like the biggest stage of the year. Everyone wants to look their best. For me, I just want to be at my peak so I’m doing all the necessary things that I can do. You know [Katana Chance] and I always are brainstorming, like, “How can we make our entrance so phenomenal? What things can we do? What kind of new moves can we pull out for this?”
There’s so much that we do during this whole entire journey and process to WrestleMania, so I feel like right now it’s training, getting in the ring and making sure we’re at our top, eating right and working out a little bit more. Just doing that little extra just to be on point. Once that moment hits, that’s what we’re really focused on.
What would a match at WrestleMania mean to you at this point of your career?
When I got into wrestling, I went to my first NXT show. It was me, my friend Jay Hudson and two other guys. I got signed [to WWE in 2018] and WrestleMania 35 was in Orlando. I remember I wasn’t [enrolled], so I couldn’t go backstage or anything. Jay had a ticket and was like, ‘Will you please go with me?’ I remember we were sitting at WrestleMania up in the nosebleeds, and I was just sitting up there like, ‘I’m supposed to be down there.’ He was like, ‘One day.’ … The Hardy [Boyz] returned, everything was magical. … [Jay] passed away recently, and it was heartbreaking, because he was the person before I started wrestling who was on this journey with me. And if I did [make it to WrestleMania], it would be amazing because it would be such an accomplishment.
