Baby Dogg

Sarah Elizabeth Warner, working under the ring name Baby Dogg (formerly Bay-B and then BaY-B), is a Scottish hardcore wrestler and former mixed martial artist currently working for a circuit of promotions, most notably Global Extreme Wrestling where she was the winner of the 2008 GEW Commonwealth Cup. She is known as “The Queen Of Hardcore” and is noted as one of the relatively few female wrestlers to have achieved success in primarily male mainstream organisations. She is best recognised for her thick Glaswegian accent and use of Scottish slang, her colourful, flamboyant dress sense and dyed hair, and the fact that in all professional public appearances she wears full face paint.

Early Life
Sarah "Sal" Warner grew up in the centre of Glasgow, with three older brothers. She, in her own words, “learned how to take care of myself” at a young age. At school she did athletics, gymnastics and judo. As a teenager she took classes in kickboxing, and has admitted to being involved in juvenile street gang wars in the alleys of the city, during which time she learned how to use melee weapons. She just scraped into University on an athletics scholarship and took up ninjutsu and tae-kwon-do while there, and ended up captaining the Open Martial Arts team for six months. When she graduated – a year late – with a low 2:2 in archaeology, a friend from a rival team offered her a place in his new MMA promotion. From there she became interested in hardcore wrestling after observing it at cross-promotional shows, and spent some time moving around the British hardcore indies learning the trade. When a friend moved to a training camp in America, Warner made the snap decision to join him.

HWA and WWE
After receiving formal training in America, Warner adopted the name Baby Dogg which soon became Bay-B Dogg to avoid confusion with an independent rapper of the same name. She spent some time travelling around various smaller, independent promotions. During this time she posted a decent success record and won one title in a cruiserweight category. Her first notable American promotion was the short-lived Extreme Combat Zone Wrestling spin-off Hardcore Wrestling Association, recommended to her by her friend Agent Orange. During her time in the HWA Warner registered only a single loss and became one of the company’s top faces. By the time the promotion folded she was the #1 contender to the HWA Heavyweight Championship, and scheduled to main event the next two pay-per-views. HWA was the home of what she later described as the first defining moment of her career, when she pulled a light tube from its housing (it was at the time being used for its intended purpose) and dropped it on her opponent's head. During this time, Warner also tried out for the prestigious Pro-Wrestling Entertainment group but was turned down as they wouldn’t accept a female in-ring performer. After HWA closed its doors, she had a brief spell with the WWE in a farm territory, whom she’d impressed enough to sign for a developmental period. She formed a tag team with Melina Perez and toned down her hardcore gimmick in favour of a ‘dazed and confused’ counterpart to her bitchy tag team partner. They had a run as the territory’s World Tag Team Champions after defeating Lita and Trish Stratus. The pair often appeared in humorous vignettes together during this time, with Melina as the straight woman and Bay-B as the comedy relief. It wasn’t long, however, before Warner was released for drug problems.

PCW and CRF
Bay-B moved to Psychotic Championship Wrestling and quickly became a fan favourite. Unfortunately the federation dissolved only a few months after her debut and she switched to Championship Rasslin’ Federation after a recommendation from Jake Jones. She graduated from the tryout brand Judgment without even competing for the CRF Training Championship, a rarity, and chose to stay there rather than move to the major brands. She was popular with the fans and posted a successful record, including a cage match victory over Sting, but found herself without a good angle until she won the CRF Extreme Championship, pinning champion Lethal in a match which also involved Lady Mistress of Pain. She successfully defended it on a number of occasions and was the reigning champion upon the dissolution of the promotion. She would then be contacted once more by World Wrestling Entertainment.

World Wrestling Entertainment: second run
Following her time in PCW and CRF, Warner was recontracted to the WWE, in their spin-off promotion HaVoc. She was signed to HaVoc’s ECW brand as its first brand-exclusive female performer and almost immediately made a splash as a contender to their variant of the ECW World Heavyweight Championship. She failed to claim the title, however, and was entered into a program with Nikki Payne. It wasn’t long before she was once again suspended for violation of the WWE’s wellness policy. Initially on ECW she was a member of the Rebel World Order stable (and was responsible for their nWo parody advertisement promos), but when the group’s leader JS2 was released, the stable disbanded. This occurred during her suspension; upon her return, her time with the Order was quietly ignored. Warner had reputedly been expressing concern over the Order’s direction anyway, annoyed with their lack of a single storyline as a unified group; at the time Bay-B was challenging for the ECW title, Psyno was defending his TV Championship and JS2 was engaged in a feud with Kyle Warren. This lack of a specific identity as a faction has subsequently been cited by Warner as the main reason the Order failed as an angle in HaVoc. Frustrated with the seeming randomness of the company’s creative direction, she handed in her notice, claiming she was done with the WWE for the foreseeable future. She briefly appeared with xWo, but was to her chagrin kept in the women’s division, and was rarely included on the match card. Consequently, she chose not to re-sign after her initial contract period was up.

Championship Wrestling Federation
Warner was one of the first wrestlers approached by veteran promoters Anthony Romeri and Ralph Wilson Wade to join the rebirth of their promotion and ended up as the first in-ring performer to sign a contract. Bay-B, along with Ironsides, Asylum and Judgment, was one of the four original main event performers of the CWF. She headlined their first ever show, defeating Lisa Jones for a shot at the CWF Heavyweight Championship against her friend Richard “Ironsides” Dawkins, who had also won his debut. When the match came Dogg took out Ironsides but was then disrupted by new signee Judgment. Judgment, Asylum, Ironsides and Dogg fought the following week in a fatal fourway. Dogg eliminated Judgment, but he returned to the match to attack her, leaving Aslyum to win the match and the title. Judgment and Bay-B Dogg went on to feud for several months, each costing the other the CWF Heavyweight Championship on several occasions. Their rivalry culminated with Dogg winning an horrifically violent street fight at Blind Justice, the first CWF pay-per-view. The match saw both wrestlers take many dangerous bumps and is widely considered to be one of the most important matches of CWF’s early days. Later, Bay-B was injured in a set-piece during Dane West’s debut. During her rehabilitation, old alcoholism problems began to surface again, and she came to an agreement with CWF regarding some downtime.

Global Extreme Wrestling
After some time off, Bay-B Dogg debuted for Global Extreme Wrestling in a triple threat with Nic Williams and The Rock. When Kadence tried to interfere on behalf of The Rock, Dogg and Williams teamed up to eject Kadi from the match and eliminate The Rock, with Bay-B scoring the pinfall. Not long after that she and Williams – now known as Phreak – formed a tag team and joined Klown in the stable The Karnevil. They proceeded to feud with Kadence and The Rock over the vacated GEW Tag Team Championship, with Kadi and Rocky winning the belts at Hell On Earth. The angle was intended to go on for longer, with the teams feuding over the belts and potentially trading them back and forth for some time, but was put on hiatus when Phreak was badly (and legitimately) injured. Bay-B Dogg then switched her attention to the Extreme Chaos Championship, defeating the reigning champion Edge in a non-title match as part of the GEW Championship tournament. She followed that up with an Extreme Chaos Championship victory at Extreme Extravaganza, unseating the longest-reigning champion in GEW history in the process. At the same PPV she also made a run-in to save Klown from a double team attack during his tournament final match against “Swift” Tony Wright, although Wright eventually won the match and the title. She lost the Extreme Championship at the following pay-per-view, Deadly Game, to Kade Michael Morrigan. After a partly-worked shoot on GEW management and the wrestling world as a whole, during which she exposed that a fellow GEW star was addicted to heroin, Bay-B retired from the industry indefinitely, citing an overburdened workload and homesickness. She returned to Scotland, although she parted on good terms with GEW. She would later rejoin the company in a staff position as an archivist, production assistant and talent liaison.

Return to the ring
Throughout December 2007 a series of teaser vignettes aired on Championship Wrestling Federation programming, concurrent with the preparation for the introduction of the CWF Women's Division. The person behind the teasers was revealed as BaY-B Dogg when she made a suprise return on the January 6th broadcast of CWF Ignition, appearing the in the seed-determining match of a tournament to crown the inaugural CWF Women's World Champion, ultimate placing second in the rankings after losing the final fall to Kim Riggs. The following week she also returned to Global Extreme Wrestling, challenging her former tag team partner Nic Williams. Their match would result in double disqualification when Williams and Dogg insisted on using weapons, and would reveal that they were in fact allied, along with several other younger GEW stars, to fight Triple H's attempts to outlaw hardcore wrestling. Concurrently, Dogg reached the finals of CWF's Women's World Championship tournament at Red Dawn, which she won by pinning Dominique Matthews in a triple threat match also involving Riggs. She became a double champion at Auld Lang Syne 2008 upon defeating Dane Jerrus for the GEW Omega Championship. She would later issue an open challenge to defend the CWF Women's World Championship against any contender, which would be answered by Riggs. Dogg lost the title in an ambulance match when Johnny Gunn interfered. At Extreme Extravaganze 2008 she and Kirsten would split a unification ladder match for Dogg's Omega Championship and Kirsten's GEW International Championship, with Dogg losing the former but winning the latter. The following week, at CWF's Blind Justice, competing despite sustaining an injury previously in the week, Dogg won a five-woman gauntlet match to reclaim the Women's World Championship, successively pinning Nightshade, Cammy Carnage, Ginger Ale and Riggs. Shortly before No Man's Land 2008 she teased a heel turn, retaining in a title match against the number one contender, the returning Matthews, by being disqualified after hitting her in the face with the Women's World Championship. In GEW, meanwhile, she joined Sah'ta Thor's Empire of Blood stable, despite Thor's bloody rivalry with her friend Kameron Chase. To date she has not assisted the Empire in any of its actions against Chase. Around this time she also recorded a victory over GEW World Heavyweight Champion Triple H, although it was by stoppage rather than pinfall or submission. She defeated Matthews at CWF No Man's Land 2008 in a hardcore match, and the feud between the two appears to have been settled. Following the death of her brother Edward, Dogg took a few weeks out from both promotions during which time it's known she resumed drinking. She returned under the name Baby Dogg, to feud with Cammy Carnage in CWF (with Dogg holding the championship until CWF's closure in January 2009) and to compete for the Commonwealth Cup in GEW, which she would eventually win at GEW Collision Course 2008 following a draw with Reese Black at GEW Open Season in the first ever triple-threat concrete cage match, also involving Adam Ramsey. During this time the GEW International Championship was vacated by then-General Manager Shawn Michaels as she had not defended it in more than thirty days, but she was named #1 contender to the GEW Extreme Chaos Championship after defeating Troy Gafgen and Devin Rhys. She would claim the championship against Mark Chapman on the 20th November edition of Thursday Night Chaos, although she lost it at the following pay-per-view, Pushed to the Limit, in a bloody I Quit match which saw Chapman whipping Dogg with the belt and later Dogg choking Chapman with barbed wire. Dogg quit when Chapman and his ally Gafgen threatened to injure Dogg's friend Reese Black, after Black had (unbeknownst to Baby Dogg) come out threatening to injure Chapman's daughter. She and Thor would go on to defeat James Airington and Shane Tallin for number one contendership to Chapman and Gafgen's GEW Tag Team Championship, albeit after Chapman and his stable/band Critical Acclaim interfered, assaulting both teams and dragging Dogg on top of Airington.

Circuit
Towards the end of 2008 Warner, along with fellow GEW stars Kameron Chase, James Magnum and Eli Keaton made guest appearances with Dean Jackson's independent promotion Iron City Wrestling, with Warner becoming the first and only Iron City Hardcore Champion, but ICW would soon be bought up by Chris Carter's Global Combat Wrestling. She and Magnum would both make the transition to the new company, along with fellow GEW star Scott Simmonds (see Greatest Ever Wrestlers). Warner made her first appearance with a run-in during a dark match at Wrestling of Mass Destruction, to save Jay Dee from an illegal triple-team attack from The Conclave. She made her televised debut the following week, defeating The Conclave's Lee to become the inaugural GCW Ironman Champion, which she successfully defended until voluntarily forfeiting it at the end of the year due to a personal emergency. She also made appearances on the final pay-per-views of the year of both Phoenix Wrestling Enterprise and the re-opened Championship Rasslin' Federation, losing to Johnny Gunn in an ambulance match (a reference to Dogg's long feud with Gunn's former ally Kim Riggs) in the former, and returning as a member of Nail's Team Hardcore at the latter promotion's Conflict event. Although Team Hardcore was ultimately unsuccessful, Dogg was responsible for both of the group's victories at the event, finishing with a personal record of 2/1. She and Nail went on to reform his stable Hardcore Uproar alongside Hardcore Harry.

Controversy
Warner is a vocal critic of the portrayal of women in many professional wrestling organizations and has admitted that her gimmick is in part an extension of her own disgust with how some companies have expected her to behave. Some equalitarian and feminist groups and independent promotions have praised her for daring to buck the trend of the model-like ‘Diva’. However, other groups have criticised her for entering male leagues and fighting in hardcore matches as encouraging violence towards women. Warner has countered these claims by saying that she portrays a positive role model of a woman “Not afraid to back down… …stands up for herself and doesn’t take **** from anyone.” Nonetheless, some companies have refused to let her compete in the standard ranks, and some male performers have refused to face her. She remains a figure of minor controversy in the field of women’s combat sports.

Personal Life
Sal has had well-documented problems with drugs and alcohol in her past, which fed a daring gimmick that made her a popular performer but unreliable backstage. Although generally considered friendly and intelligent, she has been described by peers as vacant and often turned up to shows drunk or missed them entirely. She has claimed that she “stretched herself too thin, too many times” vis-à-vis working arrangements and each such period brought her closer once more to alcoholism. While in GEW, at the behest of her friend Klown, she went through detox. Dogg and Klown chose to keep this information private at first, and she admitted it publicly shortly before retiring. She has since begun drinking again, and on the 3rd of July 2008 she and Kameron Chase received minor charges for public drunkenness and causing an affray while on a plane from Orlando to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, while later in the year she was put on minimum wage for three months by GEW as punishment for assaulting a business associate of the company backstage, although no formal charges were brought.

Sal Warner has two older brothers, one of whom, Jack, is also a professional combatant as a member of the growing British MMA scene. He had a cameo appearance in one of his sister’s vignettes during her time in xWo. Sal and Jack's eldest brother Edward died in a car crash on the 25th of May 2008, and both took time off to grieve. Jack has recently opened a multi-discipline training school and gym in New York State, and Warner is listed as one of the guest instructors, although she has yet to perform in such a capacity.

In a blog entry on the 8th of July 2008 she announced that she had begun dating after some time single, but has not yet identified whom. The nature of the relationship remains the subject of speculation as Warner has admitted to being celibate.

In an open letter directed at fellow GCW star Antonio Lopez published on the 14th of December 2008, Warner discussed and defended both her current and former drug use, as well as confirming her celibacy.

Warner is an avowed enemy of corporate influence in wrestling, as well as other sports, journalism, politics and religion. She is known to have annulled her merchandising contracts with the companies she works for, and produces her own merchandise through her website, where she also writes an occasional blog entitled 'Baby Blogg'.

Warner is a huge fan of music of all types, particularly breakbeat, trip-hop and drum & bass and the labels Warp and Ninja Tune. She enjoys mixing and DJing in her spare time, and has hosted a radio show entitled ‘The Dogg House’ in which she and a guest explore and discuss the guest’s musical preferences. She also collects comic books, variously citing as her favourites Phonogram, Nikolai Dante, Tank Girl, Wynona Earp, Transmetropolitan and Hell, Michigan.

Although her makeup is usually abstract or tribal in nature, she has in the past painted her face as Death from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman graphic novel series and former Atari Teenage Riot member Nic Endo.

She has several tattoos; a series of small blue stars up her right wrist, a celtic knotwork pattern around her belly button, a thorned axe on her right breast, and an angel-phoenix hybrid creature spreading its wings on her upper back.

She is agnostic, and has said that she’s not inherently irreligious, but can’t decide between Ásatrú or Theravāda Buddhism.

Warner has had major surgery as a result of in-ring injury on two occasions; the first was at the end of her CWF career, when she injured her right shoulderblade in a botched bump. The second was a torn teres minor, again in her right shoulder, which occured during her match with Kade Morrigan at GEW Deadly Game 2007.

In the summer of 2007 (shortly before her teres minor operation) Sal Warner had breast reduction surgery, moving from a 34DD to a 34D.

Championship Rasslin’ Federation

 * 1 x CRF Extreme Championship (final)
 * Graduated from Judgment without having to compete for the CRF Training Championship

Championship Wrestling Federation

 * 2 x CWF Women's World Championship (inaugural; final; longest individual reign; longest total combined reigns; most successful defences)
 * Number 1 contender to CWF Heavyweight Championship
 * First in-ring performer ever to sign with CWF
 * Voted joint first in Best Face and Overall Best Promos in the first CWF awards
 * Voted second in Best Individual Promo, Most Creative Promos and Best Image in the first CWF awards
 * Voted Best Face in the second CWF awards
 * Undefeated on CWF pay-per-view (8-0)

Global Combat Wrestling

 * 1 x GCW Ironman Championship (inaugural; never defeated)

Global Extreme Wrestling

 * GEW Commonwealth Cup winner 2008 (inaugural contest)
 * 2 x GEW Extreme Chaos Championship (first female)
 * 1 x GEW International Championship (longest reigning)
 * 1 x GEW Omega Championship (first female)
 * Number 1 contender to GEW Tag Team Championship (w/ Phreak; and current, w/ Sah'ta Thor)
 * GEW Woman of the Year 2008

Hardcore Wrestling Association

 * Number 1 contender to HWA World Heavyweight Championship

Iron City Wrestling

 * 1 x Iron City Hardcore Championship (only)

No Mercy Wrestling Federation

 * 1 x NMWF Cruiserweight Championship

World Wrestling Entertainment

 * 1x WWE World Tag Championship variant (w/ Melina Perez)
 * Number 1 contender to Havoc ECW World Championship

Finishing & Signature Moves

 * Arterial Splash – Modified top-rope moonsault
 * Black Widow Drop / I Drink Your Whisky – Headscissors-based submission hold, typically a counter to benchpress or electric chair moves
 * Dogg Pound – Springboard facebuster
 * Finished Symphony #1 / Finished Sympathy #1 – Suplex hold into falling facebuster
 * Finished Symphony #2 / Finished Sympathy #2 – Variant of above
 * 420° Splash - Modified senton bomb
 * Glasgow Kiss – Kick to stomach followed by elbow jab to face
 * Golden Shower - Frog splash whilst wearing championship belt
 * Hardcore Kiss - knee or kick to crotch followed by uppercut to jaw
 * K-Hole - Jumping gutwrench impact DDT
 * Old School Armdrag – Armwrench into Frankensteiner-style armdrag
 * Thunder Child - Diving spear with rollthrough into cradle pin
 * Trophy Kick / Double With Chaser – Superkick followed by roundhouse kick
 * Uncoiler – Combined jumping chokeslam/ankle wrench
 * Uncoiler Stretch – Submission hold applied after above
 * Dropkick
 * Frankensteiner
 * Fujiwara armbar
 * Headscissors lock
 * Huracanrana pin
 * Legfeed enzuigiri
 * Legsweep
 * Low blow
 * Moonsault
 * Old school
 * Roundhouse kick
 * Running bulldog
 * Russian legsweep
 * Schoolgirl
 * Shiranui
 * Shooting star press
 * Somersault kick
 * Spinning wheel kick
 * Springboard enzuigiri
 * Suicide dive
 * Sunset flip
 * Superkick
 * Swinging neckbreaker
 * Tarantula
 * Tornado DDT
 * Signature foreign objects: Empty alcohol bottle; Bubble-wrap sack used as rope or hood to choke opponents

Theme Songs

 * Spingo - Position Normal (CWF, GEW, NMWF, HWA, WWE2008)
 * Smells Like Booty - The Freelance Hellraiser (WWE HaVoc, xWo)
 * Left Hand Suzuki Method - Gorillaz (CWF, GEW)
 * Starfuckers, Inc. - Nine Inch Nails (GEW, during The Dead Precedents tenure)
 * Baby's Got A Temper - Prodigy (CWF)
 * Bug Powder Dust - Bomb The Bass (ICW, GCW, PWE, CRF)
 * 9 to 5 vs. Eple - 2 Many DJs (Indies)

Nicknames

 * The Queen of Hardcore
 * The World’s Smallest Wrecking Ball
 * The Pissed-Off Scotswoman (coined in CWF)
 * BBD
 * B-Dawg
 * The bitch whose bite is worse than her bark (CWF return)
 * Bizarro Barbie (used pejoratively by BTY in CRF)

Catchphrases

 * Corporate Wrestling Still Sucks
 * This Bitch Bites
 * Not A Diva
 * “I don’t do bra and panties matches… I don’t do lingerie shoots… and I’ll no’ be your bloody valet! I’m just here to kick your arse!”