De Lander advises WWE releases to seize indie control
Pro wrestler Steph De Lander, the Awesome Championship Wrestling women's champion, encouraged recently released WWE talents to view their departures as career opportunities. She posted on X that her own 2022 WWE release proved the best development for her career and insisted it need not end their stories. De Lander expanded on that message in a Fox News Digital interview.
The Australian wrestler rose to prominence in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling after leaving WWE, where she captured the TNA Digital Media Championship and engaged in prominent feuds with Matt Cardona and Sami Callihan. After two years sidelined by a neck injury, she returned to the ring last month at an ACW event, defeating Indi Hartwell and J-Rod to claim the women's title.
De Lander stressed the personal nature of such releases in her interview. "It’s such a different journey for everyone," she said. "My advice would be like deal with the emotions and the feelings in the way that you need to but then if you want to continue with wrestling as a career, once you’ve processed it or at least have gotten to a point where you can continue working, that’s when you need to hit the ground running and go balls to the wall."
She highlighted the freedom of independent wrestling. "Now you have an opportunity to re-write your legacy. You have an opportunity to change the perspective of what people think about you and how they view you," De Lander said. "When you’re on the indies, you have all of the control." De Lander next appears for ACW on May 16 at the MJN Convention Center in Poughkeepsie, New York.
