In professional wrestling, kayfabe refers to the performative illusion wrestlers maintain to sell the drama surrounding a match. Rivalries, betrayals, heroic triumphs—it’s all part of an elaborate web of scripted stories presented as real to keep audiences invested. (See John Cena’s surprise heel turn at WWE Elimination Chamber for a recent example.) These performances also serve to distract from how absurd the narratives can become if you stop to think too hard about them.

Queen of the Ring, a new biopic about the early career of 20th-century wrestling trailblazer Mildred Burke, feels like it’s practicing its own form of kayfabe—for better or worse. The film aims to dramatize the rise of an icon who overcame sexism and the cutthroat politics of the industry to help legitimize women’s wrestling as a worthy spectacle, even persuading several states to lift bans on the sport. At the same time, it’s a by-the-numbers biopic, running through familiar tropes on the way to its climactic final battle, complete with a “You’re probably wondering how I got here” voiceover to frame Mildred’s origin story. Like many wrestling storylines, the film is engaging enough in the moment that you can ignore the seams—until you can’t, particularly when historical inaccuracies start piling up.

Originally a single mother raising her son in 1930s Kansas, Mildred Bliss (Emily Bett Rickards, Arrow) develops a fascination with professional wrestling, drawn to a sport that allows women to showcase both strength and beauty to win over the crowd. It’s not the career Mildred’s mother, Bertha (Cara Buono), had in mind, but it beats working in a small-town diner. After seeing wrestler Billy Wolfe (Josh Lucas) in action, Mildred becomes determined to join the business. Through relentless persistence—and by literally pinning the man during an impromptu tryout—she secures a place alongside Billy and his son George, aka G. Bill (Tyler Posey). Mildred begins wrestling in small attractions, eventually working her way into the bigger leagues, competing against top fighters and navigating the sport’s internal power structures.

Soon, Mildred and Billy recruit wrestlers like Elvira Snodgrass (Marie Avgeropoulos, The 100), Mae Young (Francesca Eastwood), and Gladys Gillem (Deborah Ann Woll, Daredevil), women who see wrestling as a chance to travel the country, gain fame, and escape the drudgery of ordinary life. Their success attracts influential promoters like Al Haft (Martin Kove) and Jack Pfefer (the reliably entertaining Walton Goggins). Over time, Mildred and Billy’s business relationship becomes more complicated, evolving into a turbulent marriage plagued by his infidelity and professional betrayals—culminating in Billy’s attempt to push Mildred out of the very empire she helped build.

The film features some entertaining matches and a flair for the theatrical, fitting for a story about an industry built on spectacle. Rickards, in particular, has a blast flexing both her acting chops and actual muscles, embodying Mildred as a fierce, no-nonsense competitor with a Midwestern drawl and a signature takedown move. Cinematographer Andrew Strahorn leans into the physicality, filling the screen with close-ups of Rickards’s flexing arms whenever possible.

Unfortunately, Queen of the Ring can’t quite support the weight of its own ambitions. Running over two hours, the movie hops from match to match and conflict to conflict without establishing a clear sense of time, aside from Mildred’s son visibly aging into a young man. A subplot involving Bill’s feelings for Mildred, his stepmother, feels more uncomfortable than insightful. And between abrupt musical cues and random fade-to-black transitions, the movie often resembles the network TV dramas that originally made Rickards a star. Historical liberties abound, from the unexpected death of a character who lived well beyond the film’s timeline to a more triumphant, crowd-pleasing version of Mildred’s final match. There’s plenty of story here, but director Ash Avildsen (American Satan) struggles to make the off-the-mat drama as compelling as the chaotic fights inside the ring.

In other words, Queen of the Ring is at its best when it embraces the kayfabe—the pageantry and over-the-top performances that Rickards and her co-stars bring to the squared circle. When the film shifts into serious dramatic territory, it rarely reaches the same heights. This is a sports biopic that feels far more comfortable celebrating the spectacle than exploring the people beneath the personas.