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Professional 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 his triumphant return to the ring. She appeared in Awesome Championship Wrestling (ACW) and participated in a triple threat match against Indi Hartwell and J-Rod for the ACW Women’s Championship. When the dust cleared, De Lander was the one wearing the title around his waist.
“It felt amazing because there’s nothing like wrestling,” he told Pak Gazette Digital when asked about his return. “There’s nothing like falling to the ground. There’s nothing like getting hit in the body, right? I haven’t been through that for so long. At first, I was nervous about how my body was going to feel, how it was going to hold up. Will it hurt more than before? But it’s like riding a bike. Everyone says it, but it’s so true.
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Steph De Lander is the holder of the Awesome Championship Wrestling women’s title. (life lumens)
“As soon as I got back in the ring, as soon as I took my first punch, as soon as I took a few punches, my body just lit up in the best way. I hadn’t felt the physicality that you don’t get from anything else. I hadn’t felt that for so long. I didn’t realize how much I missed it. Now I’m in the phase where I love getting hit, I love getting back in the ring. My body feels great and I definitely 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 manage her husband, the professional wrestler known as Mance Warner, in a different company before WWE star Matt Cardona gave her some moving advice.
“It was actually Matt Cardona who messaged me and said, ‘Hey, are you fighting this weekend? Are you cleared to fight yet?’ I thought, “I’m allowed because I got a reservation to manage Mance at a different company.” And he told me: ‘Look, if you left because you said you wanted to fight, you need to fight this weekend.’ He said, ‘There’s an ACW show you should contact.’ “And I thought, they actually contacted me a couple of days ago and asked if I was available and I wasn’t,” he recalled.
Steph De Lander comes to the ring at an Awesome Championship Wrestling event. (Photography by Jay Adam)
“After talking to Matt, that basically made me realize that this is the opportunity to have an amazing comeback match in a great company. Start a career in ACW. I didn’t know I was going to win the championship, but I thought this would be an amazing first comeback match. 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 came into the match as the title holder.
De Lander will return to 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 face off against Lady Frost and Vicious Vicki.
“Indi and I have been best friends for 10 years. Our careers have been parallel the entire time. We worked together in WWE; we worked together in TNA,” De Lander told Pak Gazette Digital. “We worked together on the independents in Australia, in the United States. We keep finding that we get back together. This is 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 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 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 anticipate a great match. 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 incredible. You couldn’t write it. I’ve been lucky in my career to be able to work with a lot of my close friends,” he said. “Tagging Indi is fantastic. Working alongside Matt Cardona for so long was fantastic. Working with my husband, Mance Warner, has also been fantastic. I’ve had a lot of sets where I’ve been able to work closely with people I’m close with in real life as well and a lot of times that chemistry translates. It really is a dream come true.”
With Warner winning the REVOLER World Championship over the weekend, De Lander said she and her husband have their eyes on more gold.
Steph De Lander wins the ACW Women’s Championship in March 2026. (Photography by Jay Adam)
“Oh, it’s amazing. He’s been back in this new independent career for maybe a month and he’s already won the IWTV World Championship and now the REVOLVER World Championship,” he said.
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“Between the two of us, I mean, we’re going to have to get some new display cases because it seems like we’re collecting gold left and right and I don’t think we’re going to stop anytime soon.”
