Steph De Lander Says She Feels Great Physically, Wants To Win PWI’s Comeback Of The Year Award
Steph De Lander is feeling great.
Since returning to the ring earlier this year, De Lander has wrestled for promotions like Ring Of Honor, Wrestling Revolver, GCW, House Of Glory, and ACW.
This success comes after De Lander couldn’t get cleared from her neck injury in TNA. Speaking with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp for a new interview, SDL said that her return has been validating.
“It’s definitely validating, but I didn’t need the validation. I just needed the rest of the world to see that
because I knew, I have the paperwork. I have it all signed off. I have my surgeon who 110 % is confident
in the fact that I can wrestle for however long. I never questioned it or never wavered it on any of that. I
knew Ring of Honor / AEW would clear me. I knew I would have clearance at literally every other
company. Like if I walked into WWE today, I know they would clear me because I know my injury more than anyone else—bar my surgeon. I know exactly what I had, what I went through to fix it and now I know that I’m completely cleared. So it wasn’t so much validation for me. It was more so I knew, especially
once I got that clearance from AEW, then I knew there would be no more question and that conversation
would definitely be put to bed, ‘She’s healed.’ This was never a medical question. This was TNA feeling some type of way about it and not wanting to touch that subject. But for me, I knew the whole time, but
I’m glad that now everyone else has the understanding, I’m 110 % good to go.”
Continuing on, Steph De Lander said that she’s aiming to to win the PWI Comeback Of The Year award.
“I feel great physically. I went from not wrestling for two years to now I’m wrestling two to three times every single weekend. I feel a certain level of beat up that every single wrestler feels, but my neck feels great. As you said, I dove head first in. I don’t half ass anything To quote Matt Cardona, this is such a dumb quote. I actually hate it, but he always says, ‘You can’t be half pregnant.’ Which means you can’t half do anything. So I knew I had to dive in head first. I wasn’t going to take it easy, I wasn’t going to dip my toes in. That’s the second match I had since coming back. My first match was a triple threat with Indi and J-Rod where I won the ACW Championship, and that went really well. I felt great after that. The second match I had was a singles match with Megan Bayne. We did a fifteen minute banger at GCW. After that match, I was like, ‘Okay. I’m back. I’m more than back, I’m somehow having better matches than I was having beforehand.’ So once I had a few good matches really early on under my belt, I was like, ‘My body feels great. I’m really confident in my skills. I am now ready to absolutely hit the ground running,’ and that’s what I’ve done so far. My biggest goal for 2026 was to win PWI Comeback of the Year. I do think I will at this point. I don’t know who else is doing it more than me. That’s been a big driving force behind doing absolutely everything that I can because I didn’t want to just come back, I wanted to come back somehow better than before and I think I’ve done that.”
Elsewhere in the interview, De Lander spoke about facing Deonna Purrazzo at ROH Death Before Dishonor. Check out her full comments by clicking here.
Fans can check out Fightful’s full interview with Steph De Lander in the video linked at the top of this article.
