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Pro wrestling star Steph De Lander spent two years on the shelf with a serious neck injury that required multiple surgeries and nearly derailed her career.
Last month, De Lander made her triumphant return to the ring. She appeared in Awesome Championship Wrestling (ACW) and was put in a triple-threat match against Indi Hartwell and J-Rod for the ACW Women’s Championship. When the dust cleared, De Lander was the one wearing the title around her waist.
“It felt awesome because there’s nothing like wrestling,” she told Fox News Digital when asked about her return. “There’s nothing like throwing yourself at the ground. There’s nothing like being body-slammed, right? I hadn’t been through that for so long. Initially, I was nervous about how my body was going to feel, how I was going to hold up. Is it going to hurt more than it did before? But it’s like riding a bike. Everyone says it but it’s so true.
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Steph De Lander is the Awesome Championship Wrestling women’s title holder. (Life Lumens)
“As soon as I got back in the ring, as soon as I took my first bump, as soon as I took some hits, my body was just lit up in the best way. I hadn’t felt the physicality that you don’t get from anything else. I hadn’t felt that for so long. I didn’t realize how much I missed it. I’m in the phase right now of loving getting beaten up, loving getting back in the ring. My body feels great and I definitely felt back in my element.”
De Lander described getting involved in ACW as a bit of a whirlwind.
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She said she was going to manage her husband, the pro wrestler known as Mance Warner, in a different company before WWE star Matt Cardona gave her some poignant advice.
“It was actually Matt Cardona that messaged me and was like, ‘Hey, are you wrestling this weekend? Are you cleared to wrestle yet?’ I was like, I’m cleared by I got a booking to manage Mance at a different company. And he was like, ‘Look, if you just left because you said you wanted to wrestle, you need to wrestle this weekend.’ He was like, ‘There’s an ACW show you should reach out.’ And I was like, they actually reached out to me a couple of days ago and asked if I was available and I wasn’t,” she recalled.
Steph De Lander makes her way to the ring at an Awesome Championship Wrestling event. (Jay Adam Photography)
“After chatting with Matt, that basically made me realize this is the opportunity to have an awesome return match at a great company. Start a run at ACW. I didn’t know I was going to be winning the championship, but I just thought this would be an awesome first match back. Having my best friend Indi Hartwell in the match, it felt very poetic.”
She pulled out of the show and eventually became the new ACW women’s champion, beating Hartwell who came into the match as the title holder.
De Lander will be back in action for ACW on May 16 for Reckoning. The event will take place at the MJN Center in Poughkeepsie, New York.
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She will be in a tag team match with Hartwell. The two will go up against Lady Frost and Vicious Vicki.
“Indi and I have been best friends for 10 years. Our careers have paralleled each other the entire time. We worked together at WWE; we worked together at TNA,” De Lander told Fox News Digital. “We worked together on the independents in Australia, in America. We keep finding ourselves coming back together. This is another one of those situations despite the fact that I beat her for her championship, I think we both have a mutual understanding of what needs to be done.
Steph De Lander returned to the ring at an Awesome Championship Wrestling event in March 2026. (Jay Adam Photography)
“Lady Frost is coming in for the first time at ACW so that’s a wildcard. We don’t really know what to expect to see. But yeah I think it’ll be a hard-hitting match. I think it’ll be very entertaining and exciting. Indi and I have had a lot of time together as a team. We know what we’re doing in the ring. We’ll see if we know what they’re doing, but I’m anticipating a big fight. That’s for sure.”
De Lander said it was a true delight to be able to work with her best friend, and even her husband, over the last several years.
“It’s awesome. You couldn’t write it. I’ve been lucky in my career to be able to work with a lot of my close friends,” she said. “Tagging with Indi is awesome. Getting to work alongside Matt Cardona for so long was great. Getting to work with my husband Mance Warner has been awesome too. I’ve had a lot of scenarios where I’ve been able to work really closely with people that I’ve close with in real life as well and oftentimes that chemistry does translate. It really is a dream come true.”
With Warner winning the REVOLER World Championship over the weekend, De Lander said she and her husband have their eyes on more gold.
Steph De Lander wins the ACW Women’s Championship in March 2026. (Jay Adam Photography)
“Oh, it’s awesome. He’s been back on this new indie run for maybe a month and he’s already won the IWTV World Championship and now the REVOLVER World Championship,” she said.
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“Between the two of us, I mean, we’re gonna have to get some new display cases because we seem to be collecting gold left and right and I don’t think we’re gonna stop anytime soon.”
