In an interview with Fightful, Steph de Lander spoke about her reaction to the news that her tag partner Matt Cardona suffered a recent injury. Cardona has a torn pectoral muscle and had surgery last month. De Lander has made appearances for TNA, without Cardona, in the meantime. Here are highlights:
On how she reacted to the injury: “Yes. So I was in Australia and he texted me. He’s so dramatic. He takes me and he goes, ‘I got hurt. The run is over.’ I had to go, ‘Are you fucking joking?’ Then he went and sold merch for an hour, so I didn’t hear from him for another hour. So I’m in Australia going, ‘Is Matt hurt or not?’ So I texted Chelsea. I go, ‘Chelsea, is he joking or is he actually hurt?’ She goes, ‘No, no, no. He’s actually hurt, but I don’t know how bad because he went and sold merch for an hour and I haven’t heard from him.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, so we’re all waiting to it from him about how bad it is,’ ‘cause he still had to go and make his merch money. Which I respected. I’d do the same. But once we realized he was gonna have to go have surgery and all that kind of stuff, my main concerns were, ‘Is Matt okay? Is his mindset okay?’ Because I’ve had injuries before where I had to have surgery and get taken out for almost a year. So I’m like, I get it. I know what that’s like. You feel like your entire career and life is crumbling before your eyes. So I just wanted to make sure mentally he was doing okay and, obviously, physically as well.”
On now working on her own: “Once I knew what the situation was, for me, honestly, I believe in everything happens the way it’s meant to and everything works out. So I kind of chose not to get really stressed about this and not to let it throw me off because I just sat down and I was like, ‘Look, sometimes things happen to open up a pathway to something else happening. So let’s just hold the faith and know that the work that I’ve done in the last 18 months is gonna shine through in this and maybe this is a time for Matt to step back, me to take a step forward. We’re still gonna be aligned, but it’s just the dynamic is slightly shifting.’ Then all of a sudden I’m wrestling Jordynne on pay-per-view for the World Championship. That match went great, that match went well. Unfortunately, Matt couldn’t be there, which sucked. But we still managed to create a great story and now we’ve got stories moving forward. I’m sure when Matt is ready, he’s going to become involved in some capacity. So, yeah, I just kind of decided it’s not healthy for me to sit here and freak out about this thing that none of us can control. It’s just one foot in front of the other, ‘Alright, here’s the situation we’re in, what are we gonna do to move forward?’”
