Tessa Blanchard On Intergender Wrestling And “Shattering Ceilings”

Impact Wrestling star Tessa Blanchard recently opened up about intergender wrestling “shattering ceilings.” She also discussed her upcoming matchup against Sami Callihan at this Sunday’s Hard to Kill event. The two clash for Callihan’s Impact World Championship. She made her championship interests clear following Callihan’s victory over then-champion Brian Cage back in October.

Speaking with Busted Open Radio, Blanchard explained how she feels women are now being given a platform in multiple promotions.

“[…] you’re seeing the first this and the first that, and the first this and the first that, and I think it’s so great, it’s so great for the evolution of women’s wrestling and women’s athletes all together,” she said. “And one thing that stood out to me about all that was, at first I let it bother me a little bit, it would kind of give me an itch that, oh man, I want to be part of the first this and the first that and this to happen, but I want to be different.”

She continued, “I want to make an impact on the business in a way that is different than anybody else has, and I feel like Impact is giving us the platform to do that through intergender wrestling which is really cool to me.”

Turning her thoughts to her match with Callihan, Tessa Blanchard reflected on the amount of attention their main event bout has received. She speculated that the match could generate even more buzz after Sunday as “what we’re doing is really special.”

“[…] we’re really breaking the mold, we’re shattering ceilings, it’s making people, it’s either disrupting them or people are supporting it,” Blanchard stated. “It’s cool that we’re getting a reaction either way because it’s drawing awareness to intergender wrestling which we view as just pro-wrestling because we’re in the time in 2020 where women are looked at as athletes. Women can go out there and kill it better than men, if not, the same as men. It’s a cool thing where we are in 2020. And for Sami and I to be looked at as kind of a bullet point in the evolution of it all is a really cool thing.”

Impact Wrestling’s Hard to Kill takes place this Sunday, January 12th from The Bomb Factory in Dallas, Texas.