IMPACT Wrestling’s Gisele Shaw and Gail Kim are putting their skills to the test in a much larger ring of sorts.
The duo will compete in the new season of the long-running reality TV series “The Amazing Race Canada,” appropriately taking the moniker Team Knockout after IMPACT’s revolutionary women’s wrestling division.
Both bring historic accolades to the show. Shaw is the first out trans woman ever signed by IMPACT Wrestling in its 21-year history. Kim is a bonafide pro wrestling legend, holding the IMPACT Knockouts championship seven times, IMPACT Knockouts Tag Team championship once and WWE Women’s championship once before retiring in 2019.
She was also the first woman to be inducted into the IMPACT Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2016.
More important, the two share a close friendship and working relationship as Kim sometimes produces Shaw’s matches in IMPACT and is regarded as a “hero” and “mentor” by Shaw. They hope to bring that bond and their physical prowess to conquer the international trek that lays before them.
Their introduction video on CTV’s YouTube channel shows that their presence on the show delves even deeper for them personally. Both Kim and Shaw are Asian-Canadian, and Kim points to how the lack of Asian women in North American wrestling drew her eye to Shaw when they met.
“I saw Gisele, and there aren’t many Asian women in wrestling, and I just thought, ‘Who is this knockout?’ And we just clicked,” Kim said. “I’ll do anything to protect her, whether it’s inside the ring or outside the ring.”
Shaw’s presence on the show continues its history of featuring LGBTQ — and specifically trans and gender-diverse — contestants. Former military cadet Hamilton Elliott became the first out trans competitor on the show in 2015 and the two-spirit couple Anthony Johnson and James Makokis won the competition in 2019.
How far will IMPACT’s Team Knockout go in the globe-spanning competition? Find out when season 9 of “The Amazing Race Canada” gets underway July 4 on CTV.
