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Jordynne Grace On WWE, Leaving TNA, Royal Rumble, Bodybuilding
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Jordynne Grace (@JordynneGrace) is a professional wrestler previously signed to TNA. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to talk about her time in TNA, why she chose to let her contract expire, being the TNA Knockouts Champion, becoming a free agent, what's next for her in wrestling, her surprise appearance in the WWE Royal Rumble and follow-up appearances on NXT, her powerlifting records and more!
Quote I'm thinking about: “A winner is a dreamer who never gives up.” - Nelson Mandela
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"Yes, powerlifting was just really hurting my body. Just lifting constant heavy weights all the time really messes with your joints, it turns out, and doing that on top of wrestling is just really difficult, so I just had to kind of nix that all together. [So when did that shift happen?] I want to say 2021 probably, right after the pandemic happened, something like that."
"Well I felt like I had to because I have to stand out somehow, right? This is my messed-up mentality about stuff. I feel like there was nothing unique or special about me. I don't represent a community. I didn't look a certain type of way. I was just this chubby white girl and you didn't see anything when I walked in a room. But I feel like if someone has big arms and they walk into a room, it doesn't matter if they're four foot tall, you're gonna be like, okay, they're dedicated. They do something."
"Honestly, I expected to come out there and no one was gonna know who I was. It was my first time being in WWE at all, so I didn't expect people to know who I was. I didn't know the crossover, what exactly it was between TNA and WWE."
"The first I ever heard of it was when Scott [D’Amore] called me, literally the week before, and asked if I wanted to do the Rumble like that was any question at all. But that was the first time I ever heard about it and then after that, it just kind of snowballed from there. I thought he was joking. I had just gotten home from the tapings actually, from the TNA tapings. I was like, I just don't understand why you're calling to rib me, you could do this over text, I don't get it. He was like no, they want to use you for the Rumble. And I was just like, it was mind-blowing."
"I mean, I don't want to think about all that, because I was already nervous enough as it is and I wanted to concentrate 100% on my performance. If there was any time to make a statement and to seize an opportunity, that was going to be it. So I knew I had to nail it 100% especially because I was representing TNA. If I do badly, I feel like that reflects negatively on TNA. [You were booked so strong though]. I was, and I had a really cool elimination."
"I mean, not with me. The only time that I knew about these things was when they were already talked about within the two companies and set in motion. They were being booked by Ariel, who's the head of TNA and then Shawn, who's obviously Shawn [Michaels]. I wasn't asked, I was basically told Oh, you're gonna go do this for these amount of dates. I was just like, I mean, obviously I'm not going to say no."
"Then that was the big surprise. It was not leaked at all for who the surprise opponent was going to be. They had me come at 7 pm, snuck me into a room and put a Do Not Enter sign on the door. It was wild. Yeah, they kept the surprise really well. Roxanne didn't even know. Because she had been asking, I guess, who's it going to be, and no one would tell her. Then they were going to tell her right before we went out and she was just like you know what, I don't even care anymore. Just let me have a natural reaction out there. So she went out to the ring, did her promo, and then that was her natural reaction."
"It's a crazy crossroads for me right now, because I honestly have no idea what's going to happen. Obviously, I feel like people think they know what I'm going to do more than I actually know what I'm gonna do, and I think all doors are open. As people are watching this right now my contract has already expired, and I don't know, maybe you already actually know where I am. But as of right now, I have no idea. I could stay in TNA. I could go anywhere else, who knows? You might see me in CMLL. I have no idea, it just all depends and there's a million different factors. I have six dogs. I don't want to leave home where I'm at right now. It's really hard to find a house anywhere for six dogs. I don't know if you knew that or not. Very difficult."
"I’ve been at TNA for a very long time, since 2018, and I've never let my contract expire before. I've always just re-signed. I don't know if it was just the uncertainty of not knowing what was going to happen next, or I was just scared that no one was going to want me. But I feel like now I'm more confident. I had an amazing 2024 and I think it's time. I've done so much in TNA. I've done pretty much all there is to do and I feel like if there was ever a time to move forward, it'll be right now."
"Well when he left, I was very emotional when he left, like a lot of other people, because it was just so out of the blue. We found out on a Zoom call, it was very corporate, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But at the time, I was just like, You know what? I only really signed here because I had faith in Scott that he was gonna do good things for me and good things for the company. He's the one that kind of set in motion the whole rebirth of TNA and I told them I wanted my contract to be cut, basically. So it was supposed to be until October of this year, and I was like I want to get out in January of this year. I mean, kudos to them. They heard me and they let me. So I'm very lucky for that. But I think probably I'd still be at TNA."
"No, I didn't ask permission. But it's not the exact same siren, so I think I kind of got away with that. Yeah, I didn't ask permission and no, I don't say [Holla if you hear me]. But I did wear the chain mail one time when I did a triple threat match with him, Petey and me, and I wore the chain mail."
"Okay, I would say Bound for Glory. 2022 me versus Masha Slamovich for the TNA Knockouts world title. That was up until recently the best match I've ever had. I loved that match. We beat the sh*t out of each other, and honestly, we've done it a few times since then and have topped that match, I think. But that was the match where I probably felt like I reached my peak at that point."
"That was in front of nobody. That was an awesome match. I just don't think I had gone through my transformation yet, so that's why I would say I don't think people should start with that match. But if they want to go back and dive into the history of Jordynne Grace I would start there, so they can kind of see how I transformed over the years."
"Masha has knocked me out before. Legit she's hit me with a back fist and she's knocked me out. So definitely her. Something else about Masha is, for the longest time, thank God that she finally listened to me, she didn't wear kick pads, and I don't know if you've seen her wrestle, she throws kicks constantly, so anytime she would kick me, it wouldn't make a great sound. Because when you kick someone in real life it doesn't really make a sound but it hurts so bad. So in wrestling, you want the strikes to make a sound, and it's okay if they're stiff, but you don't want them to hurt. So every time that bony front of her leg would hit me in the chest or hit me in the face it'd be so painful, and people didn't know how painful it was, because there was no sound."
"No, he does not hit hard at all. But also he didn't do any strikes to me. He just did slams. So he didn't slam me super hard. He actually complained about how I hit him. He was complaining to me about how I hit him. I know that's what I said. I was like, Come on, get out of here. I did beat Bully, which was wild. That was 2023 that was why I say that that year was so awesome, that was one of the moments that made that year so cool was that I got to win, be the first ever Knockout to win the Call Your Shot Gauntlet, and I also got to beat Bully on top of it. Yeah, that's pretty cool."
"For deadlift 505. I want to say it was like 275 for bench, and then for squat it was like close to 500. I cannot do anything close to that now. I don't even want to try. Now I'm lifting much lighter, I'm just getting a pump and I just want to feel the burn essentially. You don't feel the burn when you're powerlifting. You just feel your back giving out."
"It was just to be a wrestler in general. I just wanted to wrestle when I was a kid, but I also wanted to be a Diva. That's the era I was watching. So I wanted to be like one of the models. I wanted to be like one of the model wrestlers. I think since then, obviously things have changed so much. I started watching TNA I want to say a few years before I actually started wrestling. And the variation in WWE and TNA at the time was huge, obviously. I saw women like Awesome Kong and I was like dang, maybe I could be like that."
“My family, my husband, my 6 dogs and my 2 cats.”
