Jordynne Grace Reflects On Being Matt Cardona’s First Intergender Opponent

Jordynne Grace reflects on intergender wrestling.

Jordynne Grace is proud of the fact that she wrestles competitors of all genders. Her intergender wrestling was spotlighted during her time as the inaugural IMPACT Digital Media Champion. Eventually, she would lose the title to one of her wrestling inspirations, Matt Cardona.

Speaking with Kevin Kellam of Sportskeeda, Grace reflected on being the first woman to have an intergender match with the former WWE Superstar, crediting him for being giving throughout the experience.

“I’ll use my matches with Matt Cardona as an example. I was his first-ever, and probably second and third-ever, intergender match, like his entire career. Going into it, I had no idea because he worked in WWE a long time, I had no idea how giving he was going to be in the match. It’s hard to know going in how guys are gonna react because some guys, really don’t like to wrestle girls, to be completely honest. They don’t think it’s necessary. They don’t really like intergender wrestling, but they’re doing it because it’s kind of a thing to do. I mean, it’s wrestling. So you kind of have to sometimes, but luckily, going into that match, he was incredible, and it was awesome,” said Grace.

“But there are some instances where you have maybe, not an ego, but a sense of a guy wanting to protect himself, protect his character, or, you know, ‘It doesn’t make sense for you to be stronger than me because I’m a man’, even if that’s my whole thing. They might have something against that. But that’s one of the things that I always go into a match, and that’s the first thing I’m thinking about, What are we going to be able to do? Is he going to let me throw him around?’ That’s a big thing that comes that goes into it. Another big thing, especially for people who don’t like intergender wrestling, I find that they are more willing to accept intergender wrestling if there’s a story. So you’re not just going in there and just immediately trading strikes right away, 50/50. I think people really like a story of — if let’s say 90% of the time, the woman is usually the underdog.”

Up next for Grace is not a match against a man but a match against one of the most destructive Knockouts in recent memory, Masha Slamovich. Jordynne Grace will defend her Knockouts Championship against Masha at Bound For Glory. Learn more here.

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