Steph De Lander Wonders If Her Situation With TNA Would’ve Been Handled Differently If Gail Kim Was Still In Talent Relations
De Lander discusses several scenarios and variables surrounding her departure.
There’s an extensive interview with Steph De Lander on TMZ’s Inside The Ring podcast feed. De Lander and Mance Warner both exited TNA after the promotion informed De Lander that they had no intentions of clearing her for in-ring competition.
De Lander spoke candidly about her issues with the lack of general recovery assistance that TNA provided. She feels things would have turned out differently if she were one of their top talents.
She wonders how things would have panned out if Gail Kim were still in Talent Relations at TNA. De Lander also pondered how the situation would have unfolded if she were a man. She was told by TNA officials that they were fine with her sticking around if she wanted to be a manager.
“I have thought to myself, if I was one of their top guys, they would probably be slapping me on the ass and saying, ‘Go get ‘em bud. Get back on the field.’ That’s how I feel and maybe that’s just me being emotional about it or too close to the situation or whatever else… I can’t help but feel, okay, if we still had Gail Kim in Talent Relations and had a woman in there fighting for the women, maybe these conversations could have gone differently. But we don’t have that anymore. So I’m not trying to make it a gender thing but it kind of becomes that by nature. I do feel like it is a little bit of favoritism and I also do wonder to myself, if I was a guy, would this be handled the same way? Because it’s easy to say, ‘Oh, just be a manager. Who cares?’ And they told me that. They said, ‘If you wanna stay and just manage, you can do that.’ But they’re not gonna say that to a guy. So, I do think every situation is different… Whether that’s just emotional feelings or whatever else, I do have to wonder if I was a guy, would it be different?”
In January, TNA’s parent company, Anthem Wrestling Exhibitions LLC, filed a lawsuit against Gail Kim. For more on that, click here.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit TMZ’s Inside The Ring podcast with an H/T to Fightful for the transcription.
