Tessa Blanchard On Her Character Remaining The Same, WOW on AXS

Tessa Blanchard recently spoke to Uproxx about the upcoming WOW promotion, her unchanged character, her work ethic, and more. Below are some quotes:

Tessa Blanchard On How She Got Involved In WOW:

David McLane had contacted me about working with WOW, and I had just signed my contract with Impact Wrestling, and so I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to do both, so I just told David “no,” that I couldn’t, and then David went and contacted Impact Wrestling, Scott D’Amore, and I guess they worked out a business relationship, and Scott reached out to me, and he was like, “Tessa, WOW sounds like a great opportunity. Their vision for women’s wrestling and how they want it to be perceived, where they want to see it go sounds like really neat, really beautiful, so if that’s something you want to do, please, you have our blessing; you can go.”

So I was like, “Okay! Let’s do it! I want to do everything. I want to go everywhere; I want to wrestle everyone; I want to do everything.” So I did. I just dove headfirst into this great pool of WOW, and here we are today getting ready for the debut of our first season on AXS, so I’m excited.

Tessa Blanchard On Her Character Remaining The Same:

No matter where Tessa Blanchard goes, she doesn’t change. She’s still the same badass that goes after what she wants by any means necessary. She does whatever is necessary to get the job done, and I’ve always noticed that no matter what I do in life, no matter where I go, whatever company I wrestle in, I have to be the best. I never settle for good; I want to be great. I don’t want to be passable. I want to be one of the best in the world. I want to go down in the history books one day, and so at WOW I’m going, and I have my sights set on one thing, and that’s the gold. The Blanchard always goes after the gold, and right now Santana Garrett has the world championship and so my sights are set on her, going after that WOW World Championship.

Tessa Blanchard On Wanting To Be The Best:

Well, one thing I’ve always said is, like, so my last name, it might get my foot in the door, it might get me in front of the right people, it might get me an opportunity, but at the end of the day, when I step in the ring the last name doesn’t really do jack shit for me. I have to work really, really hard, extra hours – I have to work harder than most just so that when people make those statements, I can back it up and there’s no validity to it…

I knew, off the bat that when I started in professional wrestling, that I wanted to be one of the best. I didn’t want to be good; I wanted to be great. I didn’t want to be passable; I wanted to go down in the history books one day. And so when I started at eighteen years old, I would drive the fourteen hours to New York City for $75, sleep in my car, and turn around and drive fourteen hours right back. I would make that drive almost every weekend just so I could be around wrestling, set up the ring, set up the chairs, help out, just be around wrestling and learn and watch and study, and I would go to the ring six, seven days a week from six p.m. until three or four in the morning with Cedric Alexander training and training and failing and messing up just so I could finally get it right and be freaking great.

Because like I said, I don’t want to be good; I want to be great. I want to be better than every single person that’s been in the ring with me, and how do you get there? You wrestle people that are better than you. You learn from people that are better than you. You take the greats, you take people who have done something in this business, you take people who are great, and you study them and you learn from them and you travel the roads with them and so that’s what I did.

Tessa Blanchard On Her Goals For The Future:

Something that I really, really would like to do is to share the ring with Gail Kim… I respect her so much because I believe that she is one of the best women’s wrestlers in the world, and I feel like her entire career she was underrated. And now I’m able to kind of learn under her at Impact; she’s the agent for most of my matches. And she’s got such a wealth of knowledge that’s completely invaluable. But one thing I would love to do is to stand across the ring from her, and since I respect her and I do believe her to be one of the greats, I want to wrestle her and challenge myself because I want to be the best in the world. I don’t want to be under anybody. I want to take that for myself, and to me, I believe wrestling some of the greats and beating them is the kind of validation that I need to believe that I am the best in the world.

To read the full interview with this phenomenal talent, click HERE.