Steph De Lander and Mance Warner have returned to GCW.
Both appeared at Game Changer Wrestling’s GCW So Alive event last night.
The once against joined forces with Second Gear Crew in their feud with VNDL48.
Both superstars left TNA last week under a cloud of controversy and part of that was TNA refusing to medically clear Steph De Lander to return to in-ring action.
“I’ve had a neck injury for a while and I actually had two neck surgeries and no one knows that. I only posted about one but I actually had two. My surgeon wanted to put a little more hardware in there,” she told TMZ. “I’m fully recovered and fully healed. I actually went to WWE’s spinal surgeon to do the surgeries and I got cleared a few weeks ago. So I had been pitching storylines and working toward my in-ring return with TNA.”
De Lander believes the situation was a personal beef not anything medical. According to her, President of Anthem Sports Group, Carlos Silva, was the one who informed her that TNA would likely never clear her to wrestle again.
“I can’t help but feel if we still had Gail Kim in Talent Relations and had a woman in there fighting for the women maybe these conversations could have gone differently but we don’t have that anymore. So, I’m not trying to make it a gender thing but it kind of becomes that by nature. I do feel like it is a little bit of favoritism and I also do wonder to myself if I was a guy, would this be handled the same way?” she said.
In a now deleted video, De Lander said after the return to GCW: “I’m not going to let a businessman with a hat tell me when my career is over. Mance & SDL are back in GCW.”
