Tessa Blanchard returned to TNA Wrestling at the Final Resolution special last Friday to start a feud with Jordynne Grace before Grace departs from the promotion in early 2025 and likely heads to WWE.
Blanchard had a falling out with TNA in 2020 that led to her being stripped of the World Title and was fired after refusing to drop the title when requested. This was at a time when the world was in the middle of a pandemic, and she feared she couldn’t get back home to Mexico if she traveled to the US.
There have been allegations of racial slurs and bullying behavior from several wrestlers made against her. Blanchard and La Rosa Negra, the alleged target of the racial slurs, have shared photos of each other since then. Blanchard has not issued a public apology.
The news of her return to TNA was kept quiet, and many wrestlers are said not to be happy that she’s back. While speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer noted there are people in WWE who want to work with Blanchard despite her track record of issues.
Meltzer said, “It was an interesting thing because even though I had it in the Observer, most or many, I shouldn’t say most, many people in TNA had no idea she was coming, and it was upper management of TNA who wanted her back, and not necessarily the wrestling people, which is really interesting to me, because my question is, like, why? She’s a good wrestler, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not like she is someone that you would keep from the wrestling people. I don’t know. It’s a really weird story, other than it could be. I mean, it could be just a favor for WWE. I mean, the idea is if she’s in TNA for a while, and, you know, there’s no big backlash or anything, they could bring her into WWE because there are women in WWE who want to work with her. There may be some who don’t, but I know there’s some who do. And you know she’s very controversial, for all the reasons that everybody knows. And it’s kind of like a test thing, you know? I mean, I know people in you know both. It’s just controversial. She’s got talent. But with TNA, I was surprised, but I’m not. You never burn your bridge and everything like that if you have talent. And but she had talent, and she was in CMLL because it wasn’t like she was, you know, that there were a lot of people who were wanting her in. I mean, it wasn’t like AEW was running to get her because if they were, she’d have been there. She didn’t leave on the best of terms. She was their world champion at in. TNA and the pandemic came, and, you know, she said it’s a pandemic. She didn’t want to go back. She didn’t go back, and vacated the title, and there were hard feelings over it. But, you know, it’s a new regime in TNA anyway, and she’s back.”
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