Awesome Kong walked away from wrestling and went so far as to ban it from her own house because she knew watching would make her want to come back. Now that she finally feels healthy again, that door isn’t closed anymore.
Speaking on the No Contest Wrestling podcast, Kia Stevens revealed that she would seriously consider getting back in the ring if the right opportunity came along and someone helped her get back into wrestling shape.
“I have not excluded the wrestling world. Like, I would go back to wrestling if I got back in shape. Like, if somebody want somebody to work out with me and get me back in shape, I totally would.”
That’s a pretty big shift considering just how completely Kong removed wrestling from her life. She stopped watching it and didn’t even want people discussing it around her. The reason wasn’t bitterness. Kong knew the wrestling bug was still there, and she didn’t trust herself to stay away if she kept feeding it while her body still needed time to recover.
Then No Contest Wrestling started pulling her back in. Kong initially played the podcast simply to support the show, but eventually found herself actually listening, learning about what was happening in wrestling again and reconnecting with something she had deliberately buried.
Hearing the show talk about her even brought Kong to tears. She had been away long enough that she wasn’t really thinking of herself as a wrestler anymore. That clearly isn’t where her head is now.
“Heck no. Y’all didn’t—I told y’all, y’all put it back in my heart and I can’t—I can’t even say dang you because I—yeah, wrestling is in my blood, you know, which is why I didn’t want it in the house because once you get the bug, it doesn’t leave. You know what I mean? It will stay in you forever.”
More importantly, Kong says her body finally feels like it has recovered enough for her to entertain the possibility.
“And I needed to heal, but I feel like I’m pretty healed up. And so now it would just be about getting in shape. I won’t rule it out, but it’s not going to be my main focus. It won’t be my main focus, but I will not rule it out.”
She isn’t announcing a comeback or suddenly making wrestling the center of her life again. But if the phone rings with an actual plan attached, Kong isn’t saying no.
“If somebody called me and be like, ‘Kia, I’mma get you in shape. You going to do XYZ?’ I be like, ‘All right, I’m down.’ I would do that, but I’m not going to make it my main focus. I don’t know exactly what’s up for me next, but I know I’ve got the energy and the drive to do it.”
There’s another part of this that seems to have Kong interested too: she’s approaching 50, and she doesn’t particularly like the idea that women are automatically written off once they reach that point.
“I’m close to—I’m going to say it. I’m going to talk about it. I’m close to 50.”
Kong believes women around her age don’t receive enough respect and are too easily discounted. Give her a few months to knock off the rust, and she thinks she could still hang with anybody.
“And I feel like women of our age don’t get enough respect… And they discount us.”
“And I could go in there and hang with the best of them if I went and trained for two, three months. Yes, I could.”
So this isn’t Awesome Kong promising one more run. It’s considerably simpler than that. She finally feels healed, wrestling has worked its way back into her heart, and if somebody comes calling with the right opportunity, she’s willing to find out whether Awesome Kong still has another fight left in her.
Would you want to see Awesome Kong make one more in-ring run, and who would you put her against? Let us know in the comments.
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