Steph De Lander Breaks Silence on PCO’s TNA Exit and How It Unexpectedly Brought Her Closer to Mance Warner

Steph De Lander was just a fan in the crowd cheering for her “husband” PCO when everything hit the fan—literally and figuratively.

During an appearance at GCW’s The People vs. GCW event back in January, PCO stunned the wrestling world by smashing the TNA Digital Media Championship with a sledgehammer, effectively ending both his time in TNA and his on-screen storyline marriage with De Lander. And yes, Steph was right there when it all went down.

“I was at GCW when it happened… I was in the crowd, and I was like, ‘P-C-O, P-C-O, that’s my husband. Woo!’” De Lander told Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp. But the moment things got real, she went straight to the back, desperate to figure out if the belt destruction was a shoot or part of a storyline. “When I got backstage and I looked at Brett, I go, ‘What have you done?’ I didn’t know if it was an angle. I didn’t know if it was real… No one else knew. So I was not thrilled.”

Once reality set in, she had one thought: find PCO and let him know how much she appreciated their time working together.

“I don’t know where he stands with TNA now. I don’t know if we’re going to cross paths again soon… I need to have this conversation with him right now.” She ran to Gorilla to catch him. “I just spoke to him for a few minutes… ‘Look, I absolutely loved working with you. I’m very happy with how everything went. There’s no ill will here. I want the best for you…’”

Backstage, she reached out to Tommy Dreamer to figure out what was going on creatively. “I rang Tommy Dreamer, and I was like, ‘I don’t know what belt is where, don’t know who has what, what are we doing now?’” His response was simple: “We’re figuring it out, don’t worry.”

But in a twist no one saw coming, PCO’s dramatic exit actually opened the door for Steph’s real-life boyfriend, Mance Warner, to join her in TNA.

“It’s such crazy poetic justice that my onscreen husband having his moment is what led to my real-life boyfriend coming into the mix in TNA,” she said. “I thought this situation was going to be really, really bad for me, but it actually worked out really good. I got a title, and my boyfriend’s now at TNA.”

She joked about her track record, saying, “I’m just tagging boyfriends in and out my whole career… I got PCO. Now I got Mance. I don’t know why this keeps happening, but like, it’s a good story, I guess.”

PCO may have left a pile of broken title belts behind, but for De Lander, the chaos created something totally unexpected—a career refresh and a storyline that somehow turned into real-life gold.