Blanchard speaks on the record.
Back in January 2020, Tessa Blanchard was gearing up to challenge Sami Callihan for the IMPACT World Championship at the company’s Hard To Kill pay-per-view. Going into the match, Blanchard sent out a tweet about women needing to support other women.
That tweet was met with responses from 10 wrestlers that backed accusations of Blanchard being a bully along with confirming a story about Blanchard spitting in La Rosa Negra’s face and calling her the n-word. Blanchard released a statement on the matter and denied using a racial slur.
She spoke in-depth about that stretch of her career while guest appearing on Straight Talk Wrestling. When it comes to her career, she would not change anything because she might have ended up in a different place or her ego might have been big. Blanchard said following the accusations, there were days when she did not have the strength to get through the day. She added that things completely shifted in 24 hours.
Blanchard revealed that she had big contract offers from companies and everything went away. She revealed that she begged IMPACT not to put the World Title on her at Hard To Kill. Going back to the accusations, Blanchard said she knew she was not the person that was being accused of said things. She feels the public still does not know the full truth. As far as her in-ring future, Blanchard has been in contact with companies but it does feel like the right thing to do at the moment.
Circling back to the mental struggles she dealt with following the allegations, Blanchard said she would think about ways to ‘end it all.’ She mentioned that her ex-husband helped her through some of those days.
Honestly, I wouldn’t change anything about the peaks, the valleys, the way my career’s been. I wouldn’t change anything because I’m very proud of the woman that I am now and the wrestler that I am today and where my career is because if anything would have been different, I might be in a different place, I might be a different person, my ego might be through the roof. Who knows?
So when everything happened to me, it was even like a tough topic to even talk about. I remember I was living in Tijuana at the time and I remember some days I would wake up, I didn’t even have the strength to live that day so I would just go back to bed and I would be in my bed all day long. There were days where I was tired about life, just because my identity was wrestling. I didn’t know who I was without (wrestling) and in a matter of less than 24 hours, it was from here to boom. From contract offers from the biggest companies, more money than I’d ever seen in my life to nothing. This whole storyline we had built for eight or nine months to me begging the TNA office that day, ‘I don’t wanna win it. I don’t wanna do this,’ and after, I didn’t go home. I went on a 27-day media tour in Mexico where I remember we would pull over in the Uber before every interview and I would vomit. I was just puking and puking because… it was whiplash. I didn’t know, and I was seeing and hearing and my family, my little brother and sister were 14 years old at the time were reading all these things about me that I knew wasn’t me, I knew wasn’t in my heart, I wasn’t this person but it didn’t matter. Perception’s reality, right? The truth doesn’t matter and even the real truth isn’t even out there still and it doesn’t matter. But, sometimes those things happen because when your feet are pretty far off the ground, when you fall, you fall hard and I didn’t know my identity without wrestling and through all of that, through those ups and downs, those really hard days that I didn’t know if I was gonna get through, I found out who Tessa is without wrestling. I went back to college, I joined R.O.T.C., Army R.O.T.C. and I found out, hey, I’m good at other things too. Yeah, wrestling is my dream and I love it and this is what God’s put in my life but, without wrestling, I’m gonna be okay also. There is a life after this and one day if I get hurt or one day this isn’t my life, I’m still gonna be alright because Tessa’s pretty chingón without wrestling. But, I’ve talked to some other companies and in the time and pretty recently, it just hasn’t felt right yet to go and one thing that I promised myself is that it doesn’t matter about the money, it doesn’t matter anything. If it doesn’t feel right, then I’m not gonna do it, because my happiness right now is very important to me and why I say that is because through all the things that I went through, I developed some anxiety. It sounds so silly I feel like to talk about but, unless you’ve actually gone through or experienced those high levels of anxiety, it’s hard to really explain. But there will be some days where I just, like, I’m uncomfortable in my own skin even because it just overtakes everything and I never had that before. All my ups and downs in wrestling, more so the downs, and now it’s something that I deal with quite frequently. Even just the other day, I remember just us being in a bus — there’s a lot people around me and I felt this strong anxiety and now I’m learning different ways to cope with it. Just breathing exercises and ways like, hey Tessa, everything’s okay. Recenter, refocus. Everything’s alright, and I feel silly talking about it but it’s something that’s really real that people struggle with. Anxiety.
I remember when I was going through some of my things, I remember one day in my dad’s house, I was visiting family and I was just doing laundry. I remember I was moving the clothes from the washer to the dryer and I just fell to the ground, balling my eyes out. I was like, I don’t wanna be here anymore. I don’t wanna live this life. I don’t wanna live this life. I don’t wanna do this anymore. I remember even imagining ways to just end it all, and my ex-husband helped me a lot through some of those moments but, it took a lot of self-counseling too, talking to other people and just trying to get comfortable and figuring out who Tessa is outside of the wrestling world, outside of the spotlight. When it’s all said and done, we came into this world alone, we’re gonna leave this world alone. Who am I? What do I like? What do I not like? Where are my boundaries? Where am I gonna say no? What am I okay with? All these things and figuring out how to cope with that anxiety, being comfortable in your own skin. It takes a lot of work, yeah?
She touched on having the full support of her father Tully Blanchard. Tessa would go on to briefly reflect on her time with IMPACT/TNA and the program with Sami Callihan. She stated that she learned a lot.
For sure, for sure (my dad is proud of me). You know, one thing, I’ve always wanted to carry on my family legacy, carry on my family name but create my own path at the same time. That was always a goal of mine but I never knew exactly what it looked like and I knew that I wanted to do things that women don’t really do. My résumé, it means a lot to me. More than a lot of other things. If I can do something that hasn’t been done yet, yes, I wanna go do it, and getting into the storylines with the guys, wrestling the guys, switching over locker rooms. Sami (Callihan) and I ran an eight-month program. Who runs an eight-month program and then people actually care? It was huge and I learned so much working in IMPACT, working with that locker room, and my dad is someone that he’s always tough on me. But it’s because he knows what it takes to be that next level, to be a star. There’s some things, the in-betweens that only some people really understand and he’s one of them. So, very blessed to have advices from him and from my stepdad Magnum (T.A.).
The 29-year-old Blanchard is a regular for CMLL. She’s been consistently wrestling for the company since 2023. Blanchard competed at the International Grand Prix final show on 8/23.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Straight Talk Wrestling with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
