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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 a triumphant return to the ring. She appeared in Awesome Championship Wrestling (ACW) and was placed in a triple-threat match against Indi Hartwell and J-Rod for the ACW Women’s Championship. When the dust settled, it was De Lander who carried the title for life.
“It felt amazing because there’s nothing like wrestling,” she told Pakinomist Digital when asked about her return. “There’s nothing like throwing yourself on the ground. There’s nothing like being body-slammed, right? I hadn’t been through that for so long. At first I was nervous about how my body would feel, how I’d hold up. Is it going to hurt more than it did before? But it’s like riding a bike. Everyone says that, but it’s so true.
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Steph De Lander is the owner of Awesome Championship Wrestling for women. (Life Lumen)
“As soon as I got back in the ring, as soon as I took my first bump, as soon as I landed some punches, my body just lit up in the best way. I hadn’t felt that physicality that you don’t get from anything else. I hadn’t felt that in such a long time. I didn’t realize how much I missed it. I’m in the phase right now where I’m in the phase where I’m in the phase where I love to really enjoy being in the ring again and I feeling completely safe back in my element.”
De Lander described getting involved with ACW as a bit of a whirlwind.
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She said she wanted to manage her husband, the professional wrestler known as Mance Warner, at another company before WWE star Matt Cardona gave her some poignant advice.
“It was actually Matt Cardona who messaged me and said, “Hey, are you racing this weekend? Are you ready to break yet?’ I thought I got a booking to manage Mance with another company. And he said, ‘Look, if you just left because you said you were going to wrestle, you’re going to wrestle this weekend.’ He said, ‘There’s an ACW show you should catch.’ And I was like, they actually reached out to me a few 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, it basically made me realize that this is the opportunity to have a great return match in a great company. Start a run at ACW. I didn’t know I was going to win the championship, but I just thought this would be a great first match back. Having my best friend Indi Hartwell in the match felt very poetic.”
She pulled out of the show and eventually became the new ACW Women’s Champion, beating Hartwell, who entered 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 followed each other the whole time. We worked together at WWE; we worked together at TNA,” De Lander told Pakinomist Digital. “We worked together on the independents in Australia, in America. We keep finding ourselves getting back together. This is another one of those situations, despite me beating 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 into ACW for the first time, so it’s a wild card. We don’t really know what to expect to see. But yeah, I think it’s going to be a hard-hitting match. I think it’s going to 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 know what they’re going to fight, but we’ll see if we fight. That’s for sure.”
De Lander said it was a real pleasure to be able to work with her best friend, and even her husband, over the past several years.
“It’s amazing. You couldn’t write it. I’ve been fortunate in my career to be able to work with a lot of my close friends,” she said. “Tagging along with Indi is amazing. Getting to work with Matt Cardona for so long was amazing. Getting to work with my husband Mance Warner has also been amazing. I’ve had a lot of scenarios where I’ve been able to work really closely with people that I’ve also connected with in real life and often that chemistry translates. It’s really a dream come true.”
With Warner winning the REVOLER World Championship this weekend, De Lander said she and her husband have their eyes on more gold.
Steph De Lander to win the ACW Women’s Championship in March 2026. (Jay Adam Photography)
“Oh, that’s great. 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 think we’re going to have to get some new display cases because we seem to be picking up gold left and right, and I don’t think we’re going to stop anytime soon.”
