Steph De Lander didn’t claw her way out of Melbourne’s backstreets to smile and curtsey in the ring. She’s no pageant queen with a laced-up promo. She’s the type who chews glass for breakfast and spits thunder into a microphone. A brawler born in a salon, a powerhouse trained by sharks, and the kind of woman who looks at a steel cage and thinks vacation.
She dropped out of high school at 15. Became a hairdresser. Could’ve settled into that life, trimming dead ends and gossiping about ruined marriages. But at 18, she got a look at the squared circle and knew—this was where pain had a purpose. She wasn’t here to get famous. She was here to wreck.
Trained under Australian legends Madison Eagles and Mick Moretti at PWA Academy, Steph started her career behind a mask, calling herself “FaceBrooke”—an ironic moniker for a girl who was more punch than polish. She ripped across Australia’s indie scene with the force of a tropical cyclone, clobbering names in Perth, Melbourne, and Sydney with a smirk and a boot to the face. By 2018, she was in the U.S., tangling with names like Shotzi Blackheart and Allie Katch, leaving trails of broken egos from SHIMMER to IWA Mid-South.
But a shoulder injury nearly killed the momentum. And that’s when she transformed.
FaceBrooke was gone. What came back was a predator—Steph De Lander, the Python Powerhouse. A bruiser who didn’t need to hide behind mystery anymore. She began steamrolling the Aussie scene again, putting names in the dirt and collecting belts like overdue debts. She and Indi Hartwell were dubbed “Australia’s Hottest Commodities,” but make no mistake: Steph was the danger in that package. When she faced Hartwell in her farewell match, it wasn’t nostalgia—it was a symbolic execution.
Then came the WWE chapter. NXT branded her “Persia Pirotta”—a name that sounds like a cocktail served in a Florida nightclub—but Steph made it work. She was paired with Hartwell again, crashing weddings and getting tangled in one of the weirdest angles of the PG era: the great “Kissing Contest.” Yeah, while some folks bled for a living, Steph was dry-humping PG boundaries and grinning while TMZ clicked their way into wrestling relevance.
She won matches, tangled with Toxic Attraction, and became one of the few women in WWE who looked like she could punch you through a locker. But WWE didn’t know what to do with a woman who didn’t fit their Instagram filter. In April 2022, they cut her loose.
That’s when Steph got meaner.
She went to the independents and aligned herself with Matt Cardona, riding shotgun with the king of deathmatch Instagram thirst traps. She worked GCW, Revolver, and anywhere else with a ring and a little blood on the mat. She picked up barbed wire like it was yoga rope. No scripts, no agents, just fists and freedom.
By 2023, TNA—rebranded and reincarnated—came calling. Steph debuted against Jordynne Grace and took a clean L, but left with more respect than half the roster. You don’t walk into Grace’s house and take a slap without giving back a few receipts. Steph did—and then some.
Then she got roped into a storyline with Cardona that reeked of old-school sleaze—she was his “property,” complete with a signed contract that made her look like a pawn in a ‘90s heel manager angle. But Steph didn’t blink. She used it. Turned it. Cut the ropes and burned the boat. When she revealed she needed neck surgery in September 2023, people thought that was the curtain call.
Wrong.
She came back in 2025 swinging a stolen title—the TNA Digital Media Championship—which she claimed to have “won in a divorce” from PCO. She claimed custody of the gold like it was alimony and used it to club Sami Callihan back into the dirt. Her fiancé, Mance Warner, made his TNA debut by jumping Callihan and aligning with her. In a wrestling world built on fire and cheap angles, Steph became a flamethrower. She wasn’t playing heel. She was one.
That title? Gone. Deactivated. Santino Marella waved it away like a bad fart in a crowded elevator. But Steph didn’t cry. She didn’t need a belt. She is the belt. The kind of wrestler who walks into the building and makes you remember why the term powerhouse was invented.
She’s bisexual. She’s Maltese. She’s loud. She’s cruel. She’s real. She runs a YouTube podcast that doesn’t give a damn about monetization-friendly branding. She talks like a sailor and wrestles like a cement mixer.
Steph De Lander is what happens when life throws a girl off the top rope—and she climbs back up with blood in her teeth and laughter in her lungs.
Don’t call her underrated. Don’t call her overlooked.
Call her what she is:
The last damn python in a swamp full of frogs.
