Meet the kindergarten teacher who lives a double life as a pro wrestler 

The crowd is silent.

Miss Selina has just crumpled to the floor after a hard kick to the chest from her opponent, Mad Kat Karina. She clutches her knee, writhing in pain. Her coach rushes over. The referee signals for a timeout. Even Karina steps back, concern written across her face.

“Get her some help!” someone yells, and the crowd’s cheers give way to anxious murmurs. Miss Selina slowly limps towards the ropes. The match appears over.

But suddenly, she spins around, charges across the ring and lands a kick squarely on Karina’s face. The arena erupts. It was all part of the act.

That’s Miss Selina, whose real name is Celine Chia, in a nutshell. 

Dressed in a skin-tight white button-up and black latex micro-shorts with a ruler in hand, her character is a villainous, aggressive teacher, always one step ahead of her opponents. In professional wrestling, larger-than-life personas like hers help wrestlers stand out in a crowded roster, drive the storytelling and elicit emotional reactions from audiences. 

Offstage, however, she turns into the patient and nurturing kindergarten English teacher, Miss Celine. 

The 27-year-old spends her weekday mornings marking spelling tests, reading storybooks and animating their scenes. But by evening, she’s back in the ring practising body-slamming opponents again and again.

The two worlds couldn’t be more different. Yet for the past year and a half, Celine has been balancing both—despite knowing that one badly timed injury could threaten not just her health, but her wrestling career and the classroom she’s spent the last five years building. 

Celine tells us what it takes to pursue both her passions. 

A childhood dream

Celine was just three when she was introduced to professional wrestling. Her grandfather, an avid fan of the sport, would play DVDs of American wrestling at home, and she’d sit beside him, captivated by the larger-than-life characters and dramatic showdowns.

“If you asked five-year-old me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I would’ve said a wrestler,” she says with a laugh.

That childhood dream stayed with her. At 19, Celine discovered Singapore Pro-Wrestling (SPW), the country’s leading independent pro-wrestling promotion. “I thought: I must just try, even if I go for only one class. If I never try, I’ll regret it,” she recalls. 

The reality, however, was far tougher than she’d imagined.

“It was very scary,” she shares candidly about the beginning of her wrestling career. “I had no sports background. I was a music person through and through from young.”

During practice, she didn’t dare do many of the movements. Every training session meant learning to trust her body—to throw herself onto the ring floor, absorb impact and grapple with opponents. And as the only woman in a newcomer class of 11 trainees, the intimidation only amplified.

But rather than shrink back, she doubled down. “I tried my best to train extra hard,” she shares. While most trainees attended one session a week, Celine trained twice weekly and spent her free time studying wrestling matches to better understand the sport’s movements and storytelling.

Within six months, the sequences began to click. Four months later, she made her in-ring debut at a closed-door show for migrant workers in a three-way match against fellow wrestler Alexis Lee and former wrestler Luna Inez.

“I felt like I was going to vomit at any moment,” she recalls. 

But a wave of satisfaction overcame her, adrenaline was pumping, and she was floating – it was where she knew she belonged. 

Over the next two years, Celine performed in shows across Singapore and overseas before stepping away from wrestling during the pandemic in 2020, citing “backstage politics”.

Even then, she never truly let go of the sport.

“The itch of not knowing what would happen if I never wrestled again was greater than all the trauma or anger I had,” she says. “I just needed to know if I would succeed if I tried again.”

So in 2024, four years after leaving, she returned to SPW—ready to step back into the ring once more.

The costs of stepping into the ring

Today, Celine is one of just three female performers in Singapore Pro-Wrestling’s roster of 23 wrestlers. Earlier in July, she defeated Alexis Lee to become the SPW Queen of Asia Champion.

The title, however, comes at a cost.

To the uninitiated, professional wrestling can seem alarmingly brutal. Bodies crash onto the canvas. Chairs splinter. Punches land in ways that make even seasoned spectators wince. While the actions are carefully choreographed, the physical impacts are very real.

“It’s quite an injury-prone sport,” Celine admits. She’s twisted her ankles four or five times. The occasional stray kick can leave a red mark on her face or body.

Thankfully, serious injuries are uncommon in Singapore, where wrestlers compete less frequently than those in larger promotions overseas. Once the body adapts to the movements, she explained, it’s often soreness rather than pain that lingers after a match.

Even so, the possibility of a severe injury is still a worry.

“It’s always at the back of my mind,” she says. “I mean, what to do? It’s part of life. If it’s your time, it’s your time.”

But rather than dwell on what could happen, she focuses on what she can control. She strength trains in the gym, goes for regular massages and TCM treatments, and takes each match as it comes.

“I haven’t gotten old enough to think about it yet,” she jokes. “But I know it will eventually catch up to my body. I just want to enjoy what I have now. Take it day by day.” 

Living two lives

During the four years she stepped away from wrestling, Celine pursued another long-held passion: teaching. Coming from a family of educators, she built a career in early childhood education, where she now teaches English to five- and six-year-olds.

What surprises her is how similar both jobs can feel. 

“It’s the smiles on the kids’ faces,” she says about the joys of teaching. 

“Sometimes when they see me on the other side of the courtyard at school, they just run to me and it’s the sweetest thing ever,” she shares while beaming. “Or when they secretly say ‘you’re my favourite teacher’ or ‘I’ll miss you when I’m on holiday’.” 

Ironically, she finds that same fulfilment in wrestling. “At the last show, there was an 11 year old girl who came up to me and said, ‘you’re my favourite wrestler’ – that was the best thing ever,” her face lights up as she recalls. 

The girl wanted one of Celine’s merchandise T-shirts, but none came in children’s sizes. So Celine had one specially printed for her, planning to hand it over at the next show.

Her two worlds occasionally collide in more practical ways too. Her teaching schedule gives her enough flexibility to train regularly, but school holidays largely dictate when she can travel for overseas matches.

At work, her colleagues know all about her wrestling career—in fact, they’re some of her biggest supporters in the crowd.

Her students, however, remain blissfully unaware. When they point to her ankle brace after an injury while training, she simply tells them she hurt herself during her “CCA (co-curricular activity)”.

“It’s hard for a kindergartener to process what wrestling is if they’ve never seen it,” she explains. “I have some kids who go for Taekwondo, so I’ll just tell them, ‘it’s like Taekwondo—we get injured sometimes. It’s normal.’”

But while her students are too young to understand what she does after school, there are others at home who still don’t know.

The people kept in the dark

There is one audience that has never seen Miss Selina in action: Celine’s parents. To this day, they don’t know she wrestles.

It’s an unspoken subject at home. Their impression of women’s wrestling remains rooted in the early 2000s—catfights between models in their bra and panties, rather than the athletic, performance-driven sport it has evolved into. More than anything, they’re also apprehensive about the physical risks. 

Becoming Miss Selina

“I don’t blame them for it,” she admits. “If I were to put myself in their shoes, I would also be very worried if my child wants to go into a sport like this.”

It’s also why she was quick to caution her cousin after they developed an interest in wrestling while volunteering at SPW shows. Beyond its physically demanding nature, pursuing the sport also means stepping into the public eye.

The five minutes before every match are sacred to Celine. It’s when she has a moment of peace to gather her thoughts before stepping into the spotlight. 

“When you’re standing behind the curtain, you’re you,” she says. “When you step out of the curtain, you’re a wrestling character.”

Miss Selina was born after Celine retired her pre-hiatus persona, a leather-clad femme fatale in a cat mask. The inspiration for her new character came unexpectedly, after a fellow wrestler joked that she should bring her day job into her night job.

In the ring, Miss Selina is calculating. She carries her signature ruler, and after matches she shouts her catchphrase: “Selina is always right!” According to SPW’s storylines, she even has a student of her own.

“My character is quite evil,” Celine laughs. “I’m always scolding him (her student) and calling him stupid.” 

It’s a far cry from the patient English teacher her students know. Stepping into that role takes complete commitment.

“When we go into a match, we have to completely abandon ourselves and only think of ourselves as our character,” she explains. “Otherwise, the crowd can tell when you’re not 100 per cent there.” 

“It’s not easy, it’s something people have to keep training; it’s not something that you can get on your first try,” she adds. 

Once she steps through the curtain, there are few limits to what—or who—she’s willing to take on. 

Unlike many international female wrestlers in mainstream pro-wrestling, Celine also competes against men. This doesn’t intimidate her either. In fact, she sometimes welcomes it. Their larger frames allow her to experiment with moves that wouldn’t otherwise be possible, whereas wrestling women often means she’s the one doing the lifting.

She’s competed in two intergender matches, including a Battle Royal last year — a multi-competitor match where she was the only woman among 11 wrestlers. In the lead-up to the event, she was even filmed “chopping up sausages” as a tongue-in-cheek jab at her opponents.

An uncertain road ahead

Having carved out a place for herself in Singapore’s male-dominated wrestling scene, Celine hopes more women will follow. But she understands why many hesitate. 

Misconceptions about women’s wrestling—much like those held by her own parents—still persist, and public criticism can be discouraging for women considering the sport. The prospect of wrestling with male opponents can also be intimidating for newcomers. 

That’s why she’s made it a point to support women entering pro-wrestling. Whether it’s welcoming first-timers at orientation sessions or helping her cousin settle into training, Celine wants others to feel less alone than she did. 

As for her own future, she hopes to still be Miss Celine by day and Miss Selina by night for as long as she can. She also dreams of wrestling across the region and, perhaps one day, in America. But unlike lesson plans or wrestling storylines, her timeline isn’t one she can control. 

How long she can keep living both lives remains uncertain. But for as long as her health allows, she isn’t ready to give up either.

“I don’t know how many more years my body can take doing wrestling,” she admitted. “But I find that if I don’t pressure myself, I gain more confidence in the sport.”