When Ariel X was first asked to fight for lesbian wrestling site Ultimate Surrender in 2006, she assumed her opponent would be a fellow rookie. “I was wrong,” she tells me. Her dream of an easy victory was quickly dashed. Instead, she was dominated by the Crimson Ninja, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) expert known for grappling in nothing but a bright red mask and a strap-on. It was a humbling defeat, but one that kickstarted Ariel’s own combat career.

Her loss to the Crimson Ninja led her to the “hard-edged sanctuary” of Big John McCarthy’s MMA gym for BJJ training of her own, and she’s also become well-versed in Muay Thai, Sambo and boxing. As she started to stack up wrestling victories, fans “saw the fire in my eyes, the relentless discipline driving my training, diet and weightlifting,” she explains. Even though she’s physically smaller than most of her opponents, she’s now seen as a dominant performer and “a lone predator in a crowded field.”

Two decades later, Ariel is best-known as the founder of Evolved Fights, an 18+ mixed-gender wrestling company, and Evolved Fights Lez, the site’s sapphic counterpart, launched in 2017 and 2018 respectively. She has the body of an Adonis; her chiseled physique and badass ring skills earning her a sizable following. And she's dedicated to her character. Every interview response she gives could be lifted straight from a pro wrestling promo — her language evocative of shadowy villains, larger-than-life heroes and the blood, sweat and tears required to become a combat legend.

When she was ready to start her own company, Ariel had decades of fan feedback to help shape the blueprint. “I was already deep in the game, filming erotic wrestling scenes for countless companies,” she says, explaining that fans wanted more than “the sloppy, backyard catfights most performers offered, girls with no real skills tumbling in the dirt.”

Again, she cut her teeth at Ultimate Surrender, where she gave feedback to producers and eventually began producing matches of her own. But when the owner of Kink.com, which hosted Ultimate Surrender, pulled the plug on lesbian wrestling, Ariel saw an opportunity to launch a venture of her own.

“My instincts told me the real gold lay in mixed wrestling, a raw, untapped market: men versus women,” she explains. “I had pitched the idea to Kink years earlier, and I even ran test shoots that lit up the sales charts like a city skyline.” Ariel had also experienced the underground wrestling world where “men and women squared off in private, consensual battles. Some guys wanted to be dominated, others craved true competition, no strings attached.”

For enough cash, plenty of wrestling companies let you script, and sometimes even star in, your own match. Some of the industry’s biggest names have spoken about being asked to work these matches before. And there’s a handful of top male wrestlers who, once upon a time, donned skimpy trunks to wrestle for gay erotic combat sites like Cyberfights.

All that said, getting Evolved Fights off the ground still took Ariel more than two years. Initial test shoots were filmed for Kink, but the site ended all wrestling production in 2016. She ramped up her efforts to launch Evolved Fights as a standalone site in early 2017, but “web developers vanished, their promises empty, forcing me to hunt for a reliable team.” By the end of the year, though, Evolved Fights was a fully-fledged and profitable adult wrestling outlet.

Evolved Fights Lez, the site’s lesbian counterpart, is an homage to Ariel’s own sapphic wrestling roots, with an extensive roster of more than a hundred women. “We have models of all shapes and sizes, and we book talent who genuinely love what they do,” says Ariel. “So you’ll see a lot of smiling and people thoroughly enjoying themselves in a role-play that centers on being pinned down and sexually stimulated, while you struggle to do the same to your opponent. It’s a snuggle struggle — and whoever spends more time in control during the match gets to fuck the loser.”

Think of it as a victory bonus.

Win or lose, Ariel has definitely seen how much the porn landscape has changed in the last few decades. When she launched her career 23 years ago, “muscular women in porn got slammed,” she says. “Fans spewed venom, cutting like knives. Fit women? They were outcasts — mocked, dismissed.” The treatment of late ‘90s wrestling trailblazers like Nicole Bass and Chyna, both of whom were bullied for their “mannish” looks and shamed for their sex work (in Bass’ case, it was used as evidence against her in a sexual assault trial) was abhorrent.

Now, things are changing. Muscle mommies are on top, and Ariel — along with her ever-expanding roster of fighters — are riding the wave of success. “The obsession for hot, muscular women is spreading far and wide,” she says. “Everyone’s watching now — and they can’t look away.”