Rebel is asking wrestling fans to sign a petition that will be delivered to Congress on Monday, on a law that funds the kind of research she now depends on.
Tanea Brooks, who wrestled and managed in AEW as Rebel, was diagnosed with terminal ALS earlier this year and made it public in May. She has spent the months since working as an ambassador for I AM ALS, a patient-led advocacy organisation.
She posted on Instagram on Friday, after getting home from this week’s Rebel Heart edition of AEW Dynamite, saying she had received an urgent message from the organisation.
“You’ve heard me talking about how important I AM ALS and their bill, the ACT for ALS, means to me. Renewing it will secure another $500 million for ALS research and treatment access,” Brooks wrote. “Even though it has unanimous support, Congress might keep pushing it off until the end of the year or longer. Please sign your name to this petition and tell them that’s not ok.”
Her closing line was about timing.
“ALS deserves your support, and needs it now. We can’t afford to wait. The ALS community needs hope and we need it urgently,” she wrote.
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The Accelerating Access to Critical Therapies for ALS Act, known as the ACT for ALS, expires on September 30. The House and the Senate each passed reauthorisation bills this summer, but the two versions differ and have not been reconciled, and reporting on the petition has pointed to changes in the Senate’s schedule as part of the reason. Brooks says Congress may push a final decision to the end of 2026 or later, and that ALS patients do not have that time.
According to I AM ALS, the law allows investigational drugs to reach patients who would otherwise have no access to them, and has built a better funded and more coordinated ALS research landscape than existed before it. The original Act was signed at the end of 2021 and ran for five years, which is why the September 30 date exists at all.
The reason Brooks is the one making the ask is the position she is in. She is a patient rather than a celebrity supporter, the access provisions she is describing are the ones that apply to her, and she took the ambassador role in June specifically to campaign on this bill.
Brooks joined AEW in 2019, initially working backstage as a stylist, and moved on screen in 2020 alongside Baker, where she became one of the more recognisable secondary figures on the show. She had started in TNA in 2013 and worked for Ohio Valley Wrestling, Stardom and briefly WWE before that. Her diagnosis came at the Mayo Clinic while she was being prepared for an unrelated surgery.
AEW has backed her publicly since. The company released Rebel Heart merchandise with all profits going to I AM ALS and Team Gleason, the organisation founded by the former New Orleans Saints player Steve Gleason, and Tony Khan said at the Double or Nothing media scrum in May that he wanted to put on a Fight For The Fallen show benefiting ALS causes in her honour.
Wednesday’s show was the version of that. Rebel Heart Dynamite came from the Akins Ford Arena in Athens, Georgia on Wednesday night, aired on TBS and HBO Max, and carried a card built around the tribute, with Brooks reuniting on screen with Baker. AEW chose Athens deliberately. It is the home community of the University of Georgia’s Regenerative Bioscience Center, which works on ALS therapies, and the company pointed viewers to AEWTogether.org and iamals.org across the broadcast.
The Ice Bucket Challenge has also resurged over the summer, with Sting, Adam Cole and others taking part, after the former NFL running back Chris Johnson announced his own ALS diagnosis.
The petition is at iamals.org.
