One of the casualties of WWE’s Black Wednesday that saw nearly 30 talents released from their WWE contract was Sarah Logan. Sarah Logan was a rising US indie star when she signed with WWE in 2016, spending years in NXT before joining SmackDown as part of Ruby Riott‘s Riott Squad in 2017. With sporadic appearances following the Riott Squad’s break-up in early 2019, Logan was often lost in the shuffle of the WWE’s bloated roaster and found herself released on April 15. But WWE’s loss should mark the international indie scene’s gain and the return of Logan’s pre-WWE character, “Crazy” Mary Dobson.
Growing up in Jefferson, Indiana, Sarah Bridges was a fan of her hometown promotion, the violent stylings of Ian Rotten‘s IWA Mid South Wrestling, and in particular, deathmatch legend Man Mad Pondo. When she was 17 years old, she began training with Pondo and Mickie Knuckles and in 2011, she made her debut with Pondo’s promotion in West Virginia, IWA East. She made her debut at IWA East: Vote or Die! in November of 2011, against her trainer, Knuckles. She also began work with local promotion, Destination One Wrestling in Charleston, Indiana.
She continued to work further into the US indies in 2012, working in Ohio with Absolute Intense Wrestling (AIW) and Illinois with Juggalo Championship Wrestling (JCW), forging a reputation as one of the toughest women in the indies. “Pondo, when I first started, took me everywhere he went,” she told David Falcon for Falcon Joshi Blog in 2013. “When other guys didn’t want to take the sick bumps then this girl would. So through great training and just being me, I made my name in hardcore wrestling in a short time. I’m kind of a natural when it comes to getting hurt.” But while she was becoming a cult figure in the resurgence of hardcore wrestling, she always wanted to become more in professional wrestling. So she looked across the oceans.
She headed to Japan in June of 2012 for her first tour, working primarily with REINA as well as Ice Ribbon. She would make quite an impression in the East and the next year, she began her first of two years with joshi legend Kyoko Inoue‘s Diana promotion. As a 19-year old in Japan training at the Diana Dojo, she befriended a young 17-year old student named Sareee, who has since become one of joshi’s brightest young stars (and WWE bound). During her time in Diana, she had the chance to tag with another joshi legend in Jaguar Yokota of the Crush Gals. While working for Diana, she also continued with REINA and debuted with Sendai Girls.
She wasn’t content with just adding joshi to her wheelhouse. She also competed in Europe, entering the UK indie scene during the prologue to its re-emergence. She competed in Scotland for Glasgow’s rough and tumble Insane Championship Wrestling (ICW) and their sister promotion, Fierce Females, and worked the joint World Triangle League featuring Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW), Westside Xtreme Wrestling (wXw) and Big Japan Wrestling in Germany in a huge intergender match-up. She would also make her Mexico debut with International Wrestling League (IWL).
She continued to increase her repertoire and in the fall of 2013, finally made her debut with SHIMMER Wrestling, facing Jessicka Havok at SHIMMER 61 (she’d had a dark match at SHIMMER 58). She continued to work with AIW and JCW, increasing her presence in the Midwest with Chicago’s Resistance Pro Wrestling (RPW) and Ohio’s Rockstar Pro. In 2014, she also debuted with Shine Wrestling and Queens of Combat (QOC). She would continuously broaden her wrestling playbook, from hardcore to technical, from joshi to strong style. “I would like to be known as just a great wrestler no matter what the style,” she continued to Falcon in 2013. “I want to be able to be put with any wrestler and have a great match no matter the style. In my mind, that is what makes you a great wrestler.”
Although she’d worked for WWE in various roles in skits on TV since 2014, she finally appeared in a WWE ring on NXT in 2015. Still an indie wrestler, she did some enhancement work against both Sasha Banks and Bayley, and then again with Alexa Bliss in early 2016. And it appeared that the NXT brass was impressed with what they saw – she signed with WWE in the fall and began working the NXT Live Events circuit under her real name. She would get her big break taking part in the second Mae Young Classic in 2017, where she would face Mia Yim (whom Logan had worked previously in Diana). She remained in NXT for a few more months, and then in November of that year, she was called up to SmackDown where she was positioned with Ruby Riott and Liv Morgan in the Riott Squad.
The Riott Squad were dismantled just as the unit was gaining momentum, but for several years, Sarah Logan got to live out her dream as a WWE Superstar, alongside her husband WWE Superstar Erik (formerly Raymond Rowe) of the Viking Raiders (aka War Machine). But now that chapter of her career has ended. But with the amount of experience that she gained even before WWE – in Japan, in Mexico, in the UK, in Germany, and a rising indie women’s scene in the US – and some of the polish and confidence of being a WWE Superstar, there’s no reason why “Crazy” Mary Dobson could insert herself back into any of those same scenes again now today – all of which are at levels greater than when she left them.
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