Madison Rayne, a West Lafayette native, grapples with new role in wrestling with AEW

WEST LAFAYETTE − A West Lafayette native with a professional wrestling career spanning more than 15 years is helping to cultivate the next generation of female grapplers.

Ashley Simmons Lomberger, best known to fans as Madison Rayne, was named as on-air talent and a women's division coach for All Elite Wrestling (AEW) in August.

The graduate of Ridgewood High School trained at the Big Guns Pro Wrestling Academy and started her career with Ohio Championship Wrestling, both based in Coshocton. Since then she has worked for several notable wrestling promotions including SHIMMER, Impact, Ring of Honor and World Wrestling Entertainment.

AEW grew out of the large independent wrestling event All In in 2018, which Rayne wrestled at in a four-way match. The success led to businessman Tony Khan working with the All In organizers to form an ongoing wrestling company. AEW has regular programming on TNT, TBS and YouTube along with doing live shows, pay-per-views and various merchandizing like action figures and video games.

Joining AEW

When Rayne found out AEW was having a show in Columbus, where she now lives, she made contact about being part of it. She had touched base with AEW here and there since their inception about getting her foot in the door, but it hadn't previously worked out.

"I reached out to a couple people I knew with AEW and said 'hey, can I just come and hang out, can I just be there and if I can wrestle, even better,'" Rayne recalled. "From there, conversations snowballed into 'would you be interested in coming on as a coach.' That was kind of the stuff I had been doing with Impact, so it all came together rather seamlessly."

Rayne had been working behind the scenes and in different capacities for Impact, including doing color commentary on-air with her husband Josh Mathews (Josh Lomberger). With everything she's heard about AEW from those who work there, she thought it would be a great company to explore those elements further.

"Only in the last few years, I've realized females can take a role outside of the ring and have a seat at the table and carve out different positions for themselves. That's kind of what I've been doing slowly," she said. "It's almost like my whole career has been working toward this moment. The last three months I've spent at AEW, it's not where I started my career, but it really feels like where I'm meant to be and a perfect fit."

As far as still wrestling goes, the 36-year-old wants to do it while she still can. However, it's also a way to gain the respect of the women she's coaching, by showing them what she can do inside the ring. While there are some women in AEW she's worked with in the past, there are others she hasn't wrestled. She also admits wrestling has changed a lot since first stepping onto a national stage with what is now Impact in 2010.

"These women go hard every single night and, this many years into my career, if I'm able to change and adapt and accept that challenge and push myself harder than I have in a long time, that's a good day at work for me. That's exciting and that's where that adrenaline comes from," she said. "We all step into the ring wanting to push ourselves and challenge ourselves and put out the best product we possibly can. As long as I can do that, I'd hate to waste what talent I have left by not doing it."

Being a coach

Rayne has nothing but praise for the AEW women's division, which carved it's own niche before she came in. She finds the roster talented and being a coach isn't about doing things the "Madison Rayne way." She said her main goals are to be a collaborator and cheerleader for the division.

"As wrestlers, we're creative people, we're artists, and I try to support and encourage everybody who I coach to be that. To have the freedom to be artistic in their own way," Rayne said. "If I have a thought or idea, I present it as just that, a thought or idea, not 'do it this way.'"

The locker room has all been welcoming and receptive to her, Rayne said. If you get 20 women all in the same room, you're bound to have issues, but Rayne has found that not to be the case so far. She got that feel watching from home and is thrilled to have found it to be the case now that she's on the inside.

"Outside looking in, which I did for the first three years of AEW, I saw a group of women who all really wanted to be successful. Who all really want to wrestle. Who all really want to make their television minutes matter. If I can come in and encourage that and continue to nurture that, then I've done my job," Rayne said.

Leonard Hayhurst is a community content coordinator and general news reporter for the Coshocton Tribune with close to 15 years of local journalism experience and multiple awards from the Ohio Associated Press. He can be reached at 740-295-3417 or llhayhur@coshoctontribune.com. Follow him on Twitter at @llhayhurst.

This article originally appeared on Coshocton Tribune: Madison Rayne, West Lafayette native, grapples with new AEW role