The double life of Gia

On first meeting Kierra Scott, it is hard to imagine that the warm and polite 19-year-old makes her living from fighting, provoking and taunting others. Yet that is precisely what makes her a rising star of the women’s wrestling scene in Maryland, where Scott plays the role of match villain with great panache.

Under the stage name Gia Scott, she launched her career when she was still in high school, and in less than a year has fought a dozen bouts and even taken the title in the MCW, Maryland’s local wrestling league, making her the youngest champion in the division’s history.

Her specialty is playing the “heel,” or bad girl who aims to provoke the audience. And when she steps onto the canvas, Kierra becomes Gia, forgetting her friendship with her opponent and sending a thrill of antagonism through the crowd. “I feed off the crowd’s energy, it hypes me up more,” she said in an interview in her home, all the while playing with her pet dog. “It’s very much different from my everyday  life.

When I’m in the ring, you’ll see aggressive Gia. But when I’m out of the ring, it’s just me, it’s just Kierra, nice, smiling... girl.” And off stage,  Scott  lives a  life  similar to other young women her age, posting pictures on Instagram, going skating and hanging out with her boyfriend, who is also a wrestler with the stage name of Deion Epps.

In wrestling, it is the show that excites the audience, he said. “If you are good on the ring and not doing anything special, just wrestling, they won’t care about you,” said Epps, whose real name is Carlos Carroll.