Summary

Steph De Lander said she paid for both of her neck surgeries and post-surgery rehabilitation after last wrestling at a TNA taping in August 2024.

She said she was not on a salaried deal, so time away from the ring also meant lost income, and she shared that she still has a $9,000 AdventHealth bill after her insurance maxed out.

De Lander added that she believes TNA does not have a dedicated injury budget or fully staffed medical structure for major rehab cases, and she said she spent 18 months trying to secure a return-to-ring protocol through the company chiropractor.

She also clarified that she did not break her neck, stating she had a one-level cervical issue at C5-C6 and underwent fusion surgery for a bulging disc.

Steph De Lander’s medical-cost details sharpen the TNA support debate

Steph De Lander’s financial details put concrete numbers behind her exit story, and that shifts the conversation from general dissatisfaction to a specific claim about how injury recovery is funded and managed.

Her clarification about the C5-C6 fusion and her timeline trying to get a return protocol also reinforces the pattern she described in earlier interviews about limited support, as outlined in her previous recovery account.

Quotes

Quote from Steph De Lander

“So I’ve paid for both of my surgeries. I paid for P.T. for both of them. My insurance maxed out so I currently have a $9,000 AdventHealth bill sitting there, that I’m gonna get to at some point but, yeah, it was 100 percent covered on my end and if you’re not working at TNA, I was not on a salary, I was not getting paid every week regardless. If you’re not there, if you’re not on the road, if you’re not working, you don’t get paid so, yeah, financially, it was a very big hit as well. The agreement was always, we will get to a point where as long as I’m fully cleared, I will get back in the ring again. We’d even had conversations about money. ‘Hey, we’re gonna pay you X amount, but once you’re back in the ring wrestling, we can renegotiate and we can give you a pay rise.’ So there was definitely the notion presented to me of we are gonna get to a point where you are back in the ring again…”

Steph De Lander later went on to say:

“I think it’s because they don’t have a budget set aside for injuries and a proper medical team. At WWE or AEW, there is a fully-staffed medical team. They have doctors, they have PTs, they have all sorts of people whose job it is to take care of the wrestlers when they get injured, to rehab them back to full health, and then to let them continue their careers as wrestlers. Unfortunately, TNA does not have it set up like that whatsoever. As I said, majority of my communication about my injury was through their chiropractor, who I spent 18 months trying to get a return to the ring protocol out of it, and I only got it a month ago. So, they really don’t have a setup for injuries, especially for spinal injuries, and that’s honestly why I wanted to be open about my story is, A, I want people to know the truth of the injury and the situation because I’ve already seen a bunch of misinformation online. So I wanted to set that straight of I had a one-level cervical spinal (injury) of my C5, C6 joint, or vertebrae, which is the most basic, straightforward neck injury that so many wrestlers in WWE and AEW have had before, fully recovered and returned to the ring. I did not break my neck. That’s not what happened. Even though my boss told me I broke my neck, I did not. Just to clear that up, I had a fusion because I had a bulging disc.”