Penelope Ford is one of the greatest female wrestlers in AEW, and her lack of televised exposure is a disgrace. Before joining AEW, Penelope made her wrestling debut in 2014 for Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW). She wrestled for various indy promotions including GCW, Queens of Combat, Women Superstars Uncensored, F1rst Wrestling, and many others. She won the Queens of Combat tag team championship with Maria Manic and the Women’s Superstars Uncensored tag team championship. The duo called themselves the Academy.
AEW announced Penelope Ford would be joining the company with Joey Janella on January 8th, 2019. Ford and Priestly lost their debut match on AEW Dark on October 9th, 2019 against Allie and Britt Baker. Her first victory came on March 3rd when she and Britt Baker beat Riho and Yuka Sakazaki. She replaced an injured Britt Baker in a loss against Kris Statlander at Double or Nothing 2020. The match revealed Penelope could have a terrific match with little to no preparation. Especially on a live pay-per-view. In June of 2020, Penelope earned a title shot for the AEW Women’s Championship against Hikaru Shida. This match happened at Fyter Fest 2020, where Ford, unfortunately, lost again but showed an impressive effort.
Ford would finally get a proper storyline when she and real-life partner Kip Sabian announced at All Out 2020 that they would be getting married and will be announcing their best man on the following episode of Dynamite. The best man would end up being the debut of Miro. As is a tradition in wrestling, a cake would wind up in Penelope’s face during the wedding. Penelope was pushed into the cake by Kip when Kip was struck by Chuck Taylor. The wedding shenanigans led to one of the most fun matches in AEW with the Arcade Anarchy match.
With various arcade machines surrounding the ring, Kip Sabian and Miro faced Orange Cassidy and Chuck Taylor. At one point during the match, Orange Cassidy was about to take the win, but Ford stopped it. This led to Kris Statlander making her return from injury and attacking Penelope, as well as the return of Trent? which would give the win to Cassidy and Chuck Taylor.
Kip Sabian would end up with a shoulder injury and, as of this writing, has been out of the ring since March 2021. Penelope and the Bunny formed a tag team and feuded with TayJay without Kip (Tay Conti and Anna Jay). The teams would have multiple singles matches and tag team matches, which would all come to a head on the New Year’s Smash edition of Rampage on December 29th, 2021, which saw the teams fight in a very violent street fight.
The street fight stole the show and the match had many memorable moments that made everybody pay attention to each of the women putting their bodies on the line in a bloody and brutal fight. Unfortunately, as of this writing, Penelope has only had one match since then in a single match on Dark in a win against Angelica Risk on January 15th, 2022.
It is a total mystery why Penelope Ford isn’t being used to her full potential. She has the perfect look and arrogance to her that makes her the perfect heel in the women’s division. The AEW Women’s Champion or the TBS Champion, I think she has the ability to be a champ. Since joining the firm in 2019, Penelope has received little to no exposure. Personally, I don’t believe Penelope needs to have Kip Sabian by her side to be successful. I would love to see more from the team of Penelope and Bunny and I think if an AEW Women’s Tag Team Championship was created, they would be a front runner to be the first champions.
It could be that AEW is waiting for Kip to come back from injury to bring Penelope back to TV, and hopefully, there is something big planned for both of them. I just hate having weeks go by without the Superbad Girl on my TV screen when she has so much potential to be one of the absolute best in the division
