UPDATE x 2: As we reported Thursday night here on eWn, Tessa Blanchard has been fired from Impact Wrestling. The company posted a statement on Thursday night revealing that they had “terminated” her contract and stripped her of the Impact World Championship. She was scheduled to defend the belt at the Slammiversary pay-per-view event in a multi-person match.
According to a report from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Blanchard was refusing to leave Mexico due to her upcoming wedding. She had missed the last two sets of Impact Wrestling TV tapings. She missed the first one because she didn’t want to travel during the lockdown. Blanchard claims the second missed TV taping was because she couldn’t get out of Mexico.
While she was scheduled for Slammiversary, there was a question of whether she would be able to return to Mexico if she traveled to the United States for the show. Blanchard’s stance is that until she got married to her fiancé, Impact Wrestling Superstar Daga, she refused to risk leaving the country and then not being able to return. Impact Wrestling officials claim that’s BS and she was acting like a “complete b*tch” and trying to negotiate a new contract while holding their title “hostage”. According to reports, Blanchard and Daga are currently living in Mexico together and are said to be inseparable.
We reported earlier here on eWn that the issue between Blanchard and Impact Wrestling got worse after Blanchard didn’t send in her Impact promos. That forced Impact Wrestling’s production team to edit their June 1st show. Blanchard’s contract with Impact was set to expire on June 30th.
While many may consider Blanchard as one of the top free agents available right now, her attitude issues and the allegations that she bullied women and used a racial slur against Black Rose at an event in Japan in 2017 may hurt her. Of course, her father Tully Blanchard works for AEW so we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
UPDATE: As we reported earlier tonight here on eWn, Tessa Blanchard has been fired from Impact Wrestling and the World Championship has been vacated. According to a report from Pwinsider, the situation between Impact and Blanchard “went cold” and then escalated in recent weeks after Blanchard did not send in her Impact promos from Mexico. The company told her to send in some footage that was set to air on their June 1st episode. When she didn’t send in the tapes, Impact Wrestling’s production team was forced to re-edit the episode. Instead, they aired a sit-down interview with Joey Mathews via “satellite.”
While there were attempts to get her to return and drop the championship before leaving, the two sides could not come to terms. One source within Impact Wrestling told us Blanchard was acting like a “complete b*tch” during negotiations and wanted to be paid on a day-by-day basis. The same source noted that there was no reasoning with her as she continued to hold the title “hostage”. Blanchard’s contract was set to expire shortly before Slammiversary anyways and when it became obvious they could not get her to return for one final appearance to drop the belt, the company went ahead and fired her. Her contract was said to have been “days away from expiring”, which likely means the end of the month (June 30th). So it’s possible she was using this opportunity as a negotiation ploy (more money), especially considering she was the Impact Wrestling World Champion, and it backfired.
Blanchard started with Impact Wrestling in 2018. She held the Knockouts Championship and then won the Impact World Championship from Sami Callihan at Impact’s Hard to Kill pay-per-view event. Blanchard’s soon-to-be husband Daga is currently signed to a multi-year deal with Impact Wrestling. The two are currently living together in Mexico.
As far as Slammiversary is concerned, the Impact World Championship match will feature Trey vs. Ace Austin vs. Eddie Edwards vs. Michael Elgin for the vacant title. As of this writing, Elgin is suspended from the company due to sexual assault claims so it remains to be seen what they do with him and whether he’s pulled from the match.
ORIGINAL: Impact Wrestling just issued the following statement, announcing that they have fired Tessa Blanchard and stripped her of the Impact Wrestling World Championship. Their statement reads,
“IMPACT Wrestling has confirmed that it has terminated its relationship with Tessa Blanchard and stripped her of the IMPACT Wrestling World Championship.”
Blanchard had been living in Mexico and there were said to have been issues between the two sides for awhile now. We’ll have more on this developing story as it becomes available.
