Earlier this week, it was announced that Steph De Lander and her husband, Mance Warner, have left TNA. Reports indicated the departure came after TNA declined to medically clear De Lander for an in-ring return. De Lander had undergone two neck surgeries and stated that she personally covered the cost of both procedures as well as her physical therapy.
While speaking with TMZ’s Inside The Ring podcast, De Landed said the following:
“So I’ve paid for both of my surgeries. I paid for P.T. for both of them. My insurance maxed out so I currently have a $9,000 AdventHealth bill sitting there, that I’m gonna get to at some point but, yeah, it was 100 percent covered on my end and if you’re not working at TNA — I was not on a salary, I was not getting paid every week regardless. If you’re not there, if you’re not on the road, if you’re not working, you don’t get paid so, yeah, financially, it was a very big hit as well.
The agreement was always, we will get to a point where as long as I’m fully cleared, I will get back in the ring again. We’d even had conversations about money. ‘Hey, we’re gonna pay you X amount, but once you’re back in the ring wrestling, we can renegotiate and we can give you a pay rise.’ So there was definitely the notion presented to me of we are gonna get to a point where you are back in the ring again…”
She continues, “I think it’s because they don’t have a budget set aside for injuries and a proper medical team. At WWE or AEW, there is a fully-staffed medical team. They have doctors, they have PTs, they have all sorts of people whose job it is to take care of the wrestlers when they get injured, to rehab them back to full health, and then to let them continue their careers as wrestlers. Unfortunately, TNA does not have it set up like that whatsoever. As I said, majority of my communication about my injury was through their chiropractor, who I spent 18 months trying to get a return to the ring protocol out of it, and I only got it a month ago. So, they really don’t have a setup for injuries, especially for spinal injuries, and that’s honestly why I wanted to be open about my story is, A, I want people to know the truth of the injury and the situation because I’ve already seen a bunch of misinformation online. So I wanted to set that straight of I had a one-level cervical spinal (injury) of my C5, C6 joint, or vertebrae, which is the most basic, straightforward neck injury that so many wrestlers in WWE and AEW have had before, fully recovered and returned to the ring. I did not break my neck. That’s not what happened. Even though my boss told me I broke my neck, I did not. Just to clear that up, I had a fusion because I had a bulging disc.”
In a separate interview with Fightful, SDL recounts going to TNA President Carlos Silva in regards to an in-ring return. Silva shut down the idea of her ever returning to the ring in TNA and allegedly wasn’t aware of her exact injury.
“So, basically, I’ve had a neck injury for a while, and I’ve actually had two neck surgeries. No one knows that. I only posted about one, but I actually had two. My surgeon wanted to put a little bit more hardware in there. But fully recovered, fully healed. I actually went to WWE’s spinal surgeon to do the surgeries, and I got clearance a few weeks ago, so, I had been pitching storylines and working towards my in-ring return with TNA. But then, I received a phone call on Monday of this week that basically they never wanted to let me wrestle at TNA again. They just didn’t feel comfortable with that. So then I made the decision to leave, and my husband did too in solidarity.”
“So I reached out actually to my boss and was like, ‘Look, if there’s been a conversation about me not wrestling again, just let me know,’ and yeah, Carlos (Silva) called me on Monday and told me, ‘Look, we’re just not comfortable with you wrestling,’ and I was like, ‘Well, I’m literally fully cleared’ and he said, ‘Yep, not into it,’ and then I asked, ‘Do you know what my injury is?’ And he didn’t know. He couldn’t tell me what my injury was. It’s definitely based on personal feelings. I mean, I have not been evaluated by any medical professional on the TNA end. They have a chiropractor at the shows and I think one other doctor who I’ve barely spoken with so, they haven’t evaluated my medical history, they haven’t contacted my surgeon, they haven’t looked at any of my medical stuff. It’s just, they made a personal decision and yeah, that’s where we are now.”