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Professional wrestling star Steph De Lander spent two years on the shelf due to a serious neck injury that required multiple surgeries and nearly derailed his career.
Last month, De Lander made his 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, it was De Lander who wore the title around his waist.
“It was great because there’s nothing like wrestling,” she told PK Press Club Digital when asked about her return. “There’s nothing like falling to the ground. There’s nothing like being hit, right? I haven’t been through that in so long. At first 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 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 Awesome Championship Wrestling women’s title holder. (Lumens of life)
“As soon as I got back in the ring, as soon as I got my first bump, as soon as I took a few punches, my body lit up in the best way. I hadn’t felt this physical strength that you don’t find elsewhere. I hadn’t felt that in so long. I didn’t realize how much I missed it. I’m in the phase right now where I love getting beat up, love getting back in the ring. My body feels good and I I really felt back in my element.”
De Lander described his involvement in ACW as a whirlwind.
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She said she was going to run her husband, the professional wrestler known as Mance Warner, in another business before WWE star Matt Cardona gave her some poignant advice.
“It was actually Matt Cardona who messaged me and said, ‘Hey, are you wrestling this weekend? Are you cleared to wrestle yet?’ I was like, I’m allowed to have received a booking to manage Mance at another company. And he told me, ‘Look, if you’re leaving because you said you want to wrestle, you have to wrestle this weekend.’ He said, “There’s an ACW show you should contact.” “And I was like, they contacted me a few days ago and asked if I was available and I wasn’t,” she recalls.
Steph De Lander makes her way to the ring at an Awesome Championship Wrestling event. (Photography by Jay Adam)
“After talking with Matt, it made me realize that this was an opportunity to have a great rematch in a big company. Starting a run in ACW. I didn’t know I was going to win the championship, but I just thought it would be a great first rematch. Having my best friend Indi Hartwell in the match, it was very poetic.”
She retired from the show and eventually became the new ACW Women’s Champion, defeating Hartwell who entered the match as the titleholder.
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 participate in a tag team match with Hartwell. The two will face Lady Frost and Vicious Vicki.
“Indi and I have been best friends for 10 years. Our careers have always paralleled each other. We worked together in WWE; we worked together in TNA,” De Lander told PK Press Club Digital. “We’ve worked together on the independents in Australia and America. We keep finding ourselves coming together. It’s another one of those situations, even though 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. (Photography by Jay Adam)
“Lady Frost is coming to ACW for the first time, so she’s a wild card. We don’t really know what to expect. But yeah, I think it’s going to be an impactful match. I think it’s going to be very entertaining and exciting. Indi and I have spent 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 expecting a big 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 few years.
“It’s great. We 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. “Working with Indi is awesome. Working alongside Matt Cardona for so long has been awesome. Working with my husband Mance Warner has also been awesome. I’ve had a lot of storylines where I’ve been able to work really closely with people that I’m close to in real life as well and a lot of times that chemistry translates. It’s truly a dream come true.”
With Warner winning the REVOLER World Championship this weekend, De Lander said she and her husband have their eyes set on more gold.
Steph De Lander wins the ACW Women’s Championship in March 2026. (Photography by Jay Adam)
“Oh, it’s great. He’s been back on this new independent series 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 going to have to get some new display cases because we seem to be collecting gold left and right and I don’t think we’re going to stop anytime soon.”
