Tessa Blanchard Tells The Story Of How She First Decided To Become A Wrestler

In an interview with Talk is Jericho, Tessa Blanchard spoke about when she originally decided to become a wrestler and how she reached a moment in her life where she didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life and went to a wrestling school on a whim.

She said: “It all starts when I was eighteen, I got kicked out of my house. I lived on my own for a year. I lived in downtown Charlotte, worked in a nightclub and I was kinda hanging out with the wrong group of people. One day I remember just waking up and I was like, ‘Tessa, what are you doing? What do you want to do?’ I was in college for a business degree and I was like, ‘I am not a 9-to-5 person.’ It’s just not me. And my dream was always musical theater before wrestling, but then I remember I was sitting in my room in Charlotte and I was like, ‘What are you doing?’ I remember my dad was inducted in 2012 in the Hall of Fame and we’d all gone to Miami, my brothers and sisters and I. They were really interested in going to the beach and checking out all the sights of Miami and I really wanted to go to the radio interviews and wake up at 5 AM and just hear Arn and my dad talk about everything. It was awesome to me. And then we got on the bus to go to the Hall of Fame and we were coming off at the American Airlines Arena and everyone just lined up and were screaming for the Four Horsemen and I’m like, ‘God my dad was a superstar! This is so cool!’

Fast forward, I was sitting in my room in Charlotte and I was like, ‘Tessa, what are you doing? What do you wanna do?’ And I looked up a wrestling school. I don’t know why but I just looked up a wrestling school. And I found out Highspots was twenty minutes from where I lived at the time and they had wrestling classes on Tuesday nights. So I go to Highspots just unannounced, I just show up, makeup, dressed nice, high heels, not how you show up to wrestling school. But I go into Michael Bochicchio’s office like, ‘Hey, I’m Tessa and I want to be a wrestler.’ He took me to the back warehouse and it was Cedric Alexander, George South, Caleb Konley and a few local talents in the ring. And they let me watch, and then George is like, ‘Get in here!’ So I change my clothes, I get in the ring, he lets me hit the ropes a few times, bump around a few times. I’m like, ‘God, this hurts but I love this.’ I loved it. So five, six, seven days a week, Cedric and I would go to the ring from 6 PM to 2 or 3 in the morning sometimes and just wrestle and wrestle and wrestle.

I would drive to every wrestling show that I could. I would drive fourteen hours to Whitehall, New York. Sleep in the back of my grandpa’s van and get paid fifty bucks just so I could set up the ring, set up the chairs and turn around and drive right back, just to be around wrestling. I loved it. And I just did that. I took every opportunity that I could and just seized every opportunity that I could.”

If you use any quotes, credit Talk is Jericho with an h/t to 411mania.com