Why women’s rugby star Ilona Maher mulls switch to WWE and later Hollywood

The 29-year-old from Burlington, Vermont is a two-time Olympian who won bronze in Rugby Sevens at the 2024 Paris Games, but is more known in the wider world as a social media phenomenon with nearly nine million followers across her Instagram, TikTok and X channels. She has also appeared on Dancing with the Stars and was voted 2025’s best breakthrough athlete at ESPN’s Espy awards show.

As Ilona and her American teammates prepare to face hosts England in their Women’s Rugby World Cup opener in Sunderland’s Stadium of Light on Friday, she outlines her future plans away from the rough and tumble of her sport.

“I’ve been approached before by the WWE. I don’t know if I would [go into wrestling]. I should think about it, there is great money in it,” she told BBC Sport. “We’ll see. The World is open.”

She joked that her ring name would be ‘Maher-vellous’.

Ilona’s mother is a Dutch native and her father has Irish ancestry, and the latter – who played rugby at college – encouraged her to take up the sport.

Ilona says that if she ever gets into WWE, it will be with the intention of making a transition to the silver screen, a path taken by some other big names from the squared circle, and already has some idea about the roles she would take up.

“I would love to get into the acting space and the scripted space. I think a Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson, John Cena progression – I would love to do that,” she said. “It would be exciting to see my body type on the screen. I’ll start off small – probably like a hot assassin or something, let’s not get too crazy! I’m not going to be in a rom-com just yet.”

All these future career options, and her social media activity, are necessitated by the realization that playing rugby isn’t a lucrative profession for women just yet, even though she loves her sport.

“I do social media because I have to because it is not sustainable to be a women’s rugby player – I am not going to make money doing it. It irks me at times when people forget that. I have won a bronze medal, I’ve been to two Olympics, I am a good rugby player who loves the sport. I am proud to do both but I do want to be known as a rugby player.”

Ilona is the most followed rugby player on Instagram and her international profile can be judged from the fact that her Premiership Women’s Rugby debut for Bristol Bears, against Gloucester-Hartpury, set a new attendance crowd for the league of 9,240 after the fixture was switched to a bigger venue to accommodate more spectators.

But Ilona’s future plans are on hold as her full focus is on the Women’s Rugby World Cup, where the Americans are definite underdogs against England – who haven’t lost a game for more than 1,000 days. The USA face Australia and Samoa in their remaining Pool A games. The top two teams from each of the four pools reach the quarter-finals.