Unique "Tigress" Leigh

    Known by the ring-moniker "Tigress", Unique Leigh may not have been one of the most prominent women of the professional wrestling scene, but she was definitely one of the best female submission wrestlers of the 90s. Indeed, Unique "Tigress" Leigh had a true passion for the sport. She took part in quite a number of professional wrestling bouts for various companies (we know for a fact she wrestled for DT and she once locked up with Nikki from PinDownGirls too), but she always focused her style on submission grappling.
Based in St Louis, MO, Unique Leigh wasn’t just a top submission grappler quite capable of defeating much larger female opponents as well as men in legit matches, she actually had her own martial arts school as well as her own submission grappling league, the WCSSW, and her own ring where matches and even tournaments could be hosted.

Though her WCSSW, Unique Leigh created a genre of ladies wrestling which was a cross between the glamour and the sparkle of professional wrestling and the legitimacy and the spectacularly tough action provided by mat-based submission grappling. She held a number of WCSSW shows which back in the days we personally thought would go on to hit the mainstream thanks to their unique combination of factors described above. The WCSSW – of which the Tigress was the champion of course – featured talent like BabyDoll, Stormee Knights, Storm (and extremely capable and athletic young lady, who should’ve made a much bigger name for herself in the sport), Maria the Goddess and Crissy Lynn Michaels among others. WCSSW wrestlers wore shiny lycra thong bathing suits (Unique Leigh herself was fond of this attire, which she wore for the majority of her unofficial bouts), hosiery and soft-sole, moccasin-like boots for their shows, creating quite a visual effect to go with their legit grappling and spectacular matches.
We do believe to this day that this format for ladies wrestling does indeed have quite a bit of potential even nowadays.

Being the champion of her own ladies grappling promotion did not go down well in the eyes of some of Unique Leigh’s rivals who accused her of artificially maintaining a loss-less record, despite the fact that she lost quite a few bouts through her career indeed. Others however said that the Tigress was always honest and upfront about her losses as well as wins.
What we do know for a fact is that Unique Leigh actually tried her hand at official submission grappling too. She took on Peggy Brooks on July 1, 2000 and ended up submitting to her after a Keylock hold.

Unique Leigh takes a boot in the face from an opponent while working her arm


Unique "Tigress" Leigh in action at the 1998 WWC (Women’s Wrestling Convention)