Tessa Blanchard returned to TNA Wrestling at Final Resolution 2024 last Friday, kicking off a rivalry with Jordynne Grace before the latter departs in early 2025.
Blanchard had a fallout with TNA in 2020, which resulted in her being stripped of the TNA World Title. She was later fired for refusing to relinquish the title as requested.
This incident occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic when Blanchard was concerned that she might not be able to return to Mexico if she traveled to the United States. Several wrestlers have accused her of using racial slurs and exhibiting bullying behavior.
Blanchard and La Rosa Negra, whom the slurs were allegedly directed at, have posted pictures together since that time. However, Blanchard has yet to apologize publicly.
On the latest edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer reported that certain people in WWE are interested in working with Blanchard despite her past controversies.
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.”
As we’ve been reporting here on eWn, the news of Blanchard’s TNA return was kept under wraps to prevent internal backlash, as many felt uneasy about her previous actions.