There is a moment in Jordynne Grace’s matches when somebody usually decides to hit her very hard.
Sometimes it is a forearm. Sometimes a lariat. Occasionally it involves dropping her on a part of the ring where human beings are generally advised not to land. Grace absorbs it, resets her feet and responds by lifting another professional athlete into the air.
It has happened often enough to become part of the architecture of a Jordynne Grace match.
The obvious explanation is strength. Grace has built an extraordinary physique during her career and developed from an independent wrestler into a competitive powerlifter, bodybuilder and three-time TNA Knockouts World Champion. She has said she can bench press 210 pounds, or roughly 95kg, which is the sort of statistic wrestling promoters used to invent for people before someone inconveniently started doing it for real.
But reducing Grace to strength misses most of what has made her interesting.
Her best matches have involved technical wrestling, Japanese strong style, hardcore violence, long-term storytelling and the occasionally peculiar administrative demands of WWE. She can be the monster, champion, underdog or travelling attraction. Sometimes she has managed several of those jobs within fifteen minutes.
Across TNA, WWE, Sendai Girls, EVE and Australia, these are the matches that best explain Jordynne Grace.
Jordynne Grace vs Deonna Purrazzo: Emergence 2020
There is something inherently bureaucratic about an Iron Woman match. Wrestling has decided that one fall is insufficient, so someone has introduced a spreadsheet.
At Emergence in August 2020, Jordynne Grace and Deonna Purrazzo were given thirty minutes to settle their argument over the Knockouts Championship. More importantly, they were asked to contest the first 30-minute Iron Woman match in the division’s history.
Purrazzo had taken the championship from Grace at Slammiversary a month earlier and arrived determined to demonstrate her technical superiority.
Grace did something more interesting than simply trying to overpower her.
She wrestled.
For long stretches she frustrated Purrazzo on the mat, forcing the supposed technical specialist into a more complicated evening than anticipated. Purrazzo eventually began systematically attacking Grace’s arm and shoulder, turning the match into something closer to anatomical vandalism than the usual exchange of finishing moves.
The clock became another opponent.
Grace took the first fall with a rear-naked choke at 25:18, only for Purrazzo to exploit a referee collision and use the championship belt to equalise at 28:46. With seconds remaining, Purrazzo returned to the damaged arm and trapped Grace in the Fujiwara armbar.
Grace submitted at 29:56.
Four seconds.
That is the irritating beauty of the match. Grace spent half an hour demonstrating she could wrestle Purrazzo’s match and still lost because Purrazzo had spent half an hour quietly preparing one body part for the final four seconds.
Grace’s reputation would increasingly become associated with power, but Emergence provided an early reminder that the machinery underneath was considerably more sophisticated.
Mechagodzilla, perhaps, if somebody had installed a very competent amateur wrestling programme.
Jordynne Grace vs Laura Di Matteo: EVE Wrestle Queendom 2
Before Grace became synonymous with TNA, she had already worked out something important about professional wrestling: being intimidating is considerably more useful when you occasionally allow somebody to beat you.
Laura Di Matteo entered their Wrestle Queendom 2 match in June 2019 as the smaller, persistent underdog. Grace was the established international name and reigning PROGRESS Women’s Champion who had treated Di Matteo’s obsession with defeating her with the sort of irritation normally reserved for someone repeatedly replying to an email marked no response required.
It made the roles wonderfully simple.
Grace was Goliath. Di Matteo just had to keep getting up.
There was genuine hostility in the performance, with Grace using her physical advantage while Di Matteo fought from underneath. At barely more than ten minutes, there was little wasted motion. One particularly unpleasant moment saw Grace catch Di Matteo and powerbomb her onto the ring apron.
Then Di Matteo won.
That matters.
Wrestling loves telling audiences that somebody is an underdog. It is considerably less enthusiastic about actually allowing the underdog to defeat the protected star. Grace understood that the entire construction only worked if Di Matteo eventually got something from it.
She did.
Years later, when Grace was an internationally recognised champion, this became one of those slightly hidden matches that looked more interesting with hindsight.
Jordynne Grace vs Masha Slamovich: Bound for Glory 2022
Masha Slamovich spent nine months behaving less like a wrestler than an administrative error nobody in TNA knew how to correct.
She was undefeated.
Opponents were dispatched. Photographs were crossed out. Slamovich’s wonderfully melodramatic habit of presenting future victims with a blood-red “death warrant” eventually brought her to Jordynne Grace.
Grace was Knockouts World Champion.
Something had to give.
Their Bound for Glory match worked because nobody attempted to make it more complicated than necessary. Two extremely physical wrestlers hit each other until one stopped getting up.
Slamovich attacked Grace’s head and neck, landed a Canadian Destroyer and trapped the champion in a sleeper. Grace answered with chops, spinning back fists, and a delayed vertical superplex rolled directly into a Jackhammer.
Neither seemed particularly interested in moderation.
The finish finally came from the turnbuckles. Slamovich attempted a top-rope Snow Plough, Grace escaped and delivered an Avalanche Grace Driver to retain the championship after sixteen violent minutes.
Slamovich’s undefeated streak was over.
The result established Grace as more than someone temporarily holding the belt. Champions require opponents who make losing seem plausible, and Slamovich had spent most of 2022 becoming exactly that.
It received four stars from Dave Meltzer and became one of the most acclaimed North American women’s matches of the year.
More importantly, it started something.
They weren’t finished.
Jordynne Grace vs DELTA: OPW H.E.R. 2024
There is an appealing old-fashioned quality to two exceptionally strong wrestlers meeting and apparently deciding that subtlety can have the evening off.
Jordynne Grace travelled to Ballarat, Australia, in April 2024 as TNA Knockouts World Champion to face DELTA, the Australian powerhouse who would later become known in WWE as Zaria.
DELTA had been wrestling for only about three years.
Nobody watching would have guessed.
The match began with a handshake before rapidly turning into two people testing each other’s structural integrity. They fought outside the ring and onto the entrance ramp. Grace suplexed DELTA onto the stage. DELTA caught Grace from the top rope and simply overpowered her into a scoop slam.
Then came the strikes.
Chops. Kicks. Forearms.
The kind of wrestling where you begin wondering whether everyone involved remembers this is predetermined.
DELTA came remarkably close to taking the championship with a spear before Grace finally caught her with the Grace Driver.
Grace won, but DELTA had been given something almost as valuable.
Credibility.
This was Grace functioning as a travelling world champion in the traditional sense, taking the belt to an unfamiliar territory and making the local challenger appear capable of taking it from her.
Jordynne Grace vs Chihiro Hashimoto: Sendai Girls, 2024
Five years is a long time to remember losing a wrestling match.
Which is precisely why wrestlers and wrestling fans remember them.
Chihiro Hashimoto had defeated Grace at Korakuen Hall in 2019. When Grace returned to the same building in July 2024, she was no longer merely an impressive American independent wrestler visiting Japan.
She was a three-time Knockouts Champion at arguably the physical peak of her career.
Hashimoto remained Hashimoto.
That was the problem.
The Sendai Girls ace has built a reputation around making supposedly strong wrestlers reconsider how much they enjoy being strong. Against Grace, she threw forearms into her back, enormous lariats and powerbombs with very little decorative wrapping.
Grace responded in kind.
There was no need for elaborate choreography because the attraction was the collision itself. Hashimoto could move Grace. Grace could move Hashimoto. Each woman therefore became slightly more impressive every time she managed it.
Grace eventually lifted Hashimoto into a Vertebreaker before hitting the Juggernaut Driver for the victory.
Five years after losing in Korakuen Hall, she had returned and beaten the Sendai Girls ace in the same building.
Wrestling frequently manufactures redemption stories in six-week television programmes. This one had been sitting quietly in the background since 2019.
Those tend to work better.
Jordynne Grace vs Masha Slamovich: Bound for Glory 2024
The photograph on Masha Slamovich’s wall had never been crossed out.
That was the important bit.
Two years after Grace ended Slamovich’s undefeated streak at Bound for Glory, they returned to the same event with their roles reversed. Grace was now in her third Knockouts Championship reign and had become one of the central figures in TNA’s increasingly visible relationship with WWE.
Slamovich still had not defeated her in a TNA singles match.
Grace knew it.
Slamovich knew it.
Everyone else had fortunately been paying attention.
Rather than recreate their 2022 fight, Grace approached this one differently. She attacked Slamovich’s left leg, repeatedly smashing it against the ring post and applying submissions designed to remove the challenger’s explosiveness.
It nearly worked.
Grace hit the Juggernaut Driver.
Slamovich kicked out.
That was the moment.
Grace’s ultimate weapon had spent the year-ending matches. Slamovich, having survived it quietly, announced that their relationship had changed.
She eventually headbutted her way free of another Grace Driver attempt, worked through a spectacular finishing sequence and delivered a top-rope Snow Plough followed by a piledriver.
Three count.
Two years after Grace stopped Slamovich, Slamovich finally stopped Grace.
Grace subsequently wrote that there was nobody she would rather have lost to than her best friend.
Professional wrestling contains an awful lot of talk about “passing the torch”, usually because somebody has spotted two wrestlers of different ages standing within six feet of one another. This actually felt like one.
Jordynne Grace vs Tessa Blanchard: TNA Genesis 2025
By January 2025, everybody knew Grace was leaving TNA.
That creates a peculiar situation in wrestling. A performer can spend years becoming important, and then, during their final weeks, their remaining usefulness lies in losing to people who are staying.
Grace’s final TNA opponent was Tessa Blanchard.
Not uncomplicated.
Blanchard had returned after more than four years away amid considerable controversy and immediately targeted Grace, presenting herself as the woman truly responsible for the Knockouts division’s success.
Their Genesis match lasted more than twenty minutes.
Grace hit a Death Valley Driver onto the steel steps. Blanchard used an Octopus stretch. They wrestled with the sort of physical hostility required to convince an audience that two people who have spent weeks claiming to dislike one another may, in fact, dislike one another.
Eventually Blanchard removed a turnbuckle pad.
Because wrestling remains wrestling.
Grace was driven face-first into the exposed corner before Blanchard hit the Magnum from the top rope and pinned her.
That was it.
Grace’s TNA career, stretching back to 2018 and encompassing three Knockouts World Championships, ended with her staring at the lights so somebody else could continue.
Less than two weeks later, she appeared in WWE’s Royal Rumble.
Sometimes wrestling’s great career transitions involve emotional speeches.
Sometimes you get thrown into exposed steel first.
Jordynne Grace vs Giulia: WWE NXT, 6 May 2025
Grace and Giulia apparently got into trouble for this match.
Naturally, this only made people like it more.
They were wrestling to determine Stephanie Vaquer’s next challenger for the NXT Women’s Championship. Still, the match quickly became notable for how little interest either woman appeared to have in producing a conventional WWE television match.
It was stiff.
Very stiff.
Grace dropped Giulia at frightening angles. Giulia returned the favour. A Japanese-style Michinoku Driver became particularly controversial because WWE management reportedly felt some of the bumps were unnecessarily dangerous, and Grace later explained she had not realised that version of the move conflicted with the company’s safety protocols.
This is wrestling’s eternal contradiction. Audiences are encouraged to believe they are watching danger, then everybody becomes understandably nervous when it starts to look genuinely dangerous.
Strip that controversy away and there was an excellent match underneath.
Giulia trapped Grace in a guillotine. Grace simply stood up and threw her overhead. Grace produced her familiar delayed superplex into a Jackhammer. Giulia answered with a DDT and Northern Lights Driver.
Grace eventually countered another Northern Lights Driver, landed a spinning back fist and finished Giulia with Beast Mode.
She had arrived in WWE with years of experience working different styles around the world. Against Giulia, she briefly brought some of that world with her.
Management was apparently unimpressed.
The audience rather enjoyed it.
Both things can be true.
Jordynne Grace vs Stephanie Vaquer: NXT Battleground 2025
Having defeated Giulia, Grace earned a match with Stephanie Vaquer.
Congratulations.
Vaquer’s NXT Women’s Championship was on the line at Battleground, giving Grace another opportunity to win the major WWE championship that had repeatedly escaped her.
The match became an unusually clean demonstration of contrasting strengths.
Grace could overpower Vaquer. Vaquer could outmanoeuvre Grace.
So they spent the match repeatedly proving both points.
Grace produced a double-underhook sit-out powerbomb and another enormous superplex into a Jackhammer. Vaquer attacked Grace’s limbs, used her faster transitions and eventually sent the challenger crashing through the ringside barricade.
Grace survived the SVB.
Vaquer needed something else.
She found it from the top rope, finishing Grace with a spectacular Spiral Tap to retain the championship.
Grace lost again.
Her response afterwards was revealing. She described the hardest truth as simply “not being good enough”.
For somebody whose entire visual presentation suggests physical invulnerability, Grace has always been unusually willing to incorporate failure into her character.
Two days later, Vaquer lost the championship to Jacy Jayne.
Wrestling has an excellent sense of humour when nobody asks it to.
Jordynne Grace vs. Blake Monroe: NXT No Mercy 2025
Blake Monroe cut Jordynne Grace’s hair with scissors.
This was after she had been tied to the ropes with a hairdryer cord.
Professional wrestling can occasionally become difficult to explain to people at parties.
Their feud began as a friendship, moved through betrayal, and culminated in the Weaponised Steel Cage match at No Mercy. By that stage, conventional wrestling would have seemed almost inappropriate.
The cage contained chairs, bins and kendo sticks. Monroe brought her own collection of glamorous weaponry because even attempted bodily harm apparently requires branding.
Then came the diamonds.
Monroe emptied a bag of them across the canvas, wrestling’s traditional thumbtack spot reimagined by somebody who presumably considers drawing pins aesthetically unacceptable.
Grace reversed Monroe and slammed her onto them.
The ending somehow became even more excessive. Monroe threw powder into Grace’s eyes as they fought high above the ring. Grace, effectively blinded, recovered her balance and caught Monroe.
Air Raid Crash.
Through a table.
Grace draped an arm across Monroe and won.
This wasn’t Grace demonstrating technical versatility or carefully pacing thirty minutes. It was Grace understanding exactly what this particular feud required and committing herself completely to it, including genuinely allowing someone to cut chunks out of her hair.
Subtle?
Absolutely not.
Effective?
Very.
What happened to Jordynne Grace?
The question “What happened to Jordynne Grace?” has become particularly relevant because her career changed remarkably quickly.
Grace finished her celebrated TNA run in January 2025, losing to Tessa Blanchard at Genesis before appearing in WWE’s Royal Rumble less than two weeks later. Her Jordynne Grace WWE career then developed through NXT, where matches against Giulia, Stephanie Vaquer and Blake Monroe demonstrated that WWE had acquired considerably more than another powerhouse.
According to the supplied career information, Grace later moved onto the WWE SmackDown roster but is currently inactive after suffering an ankle injury during a match with Alba Fyre in March 2026.
That interruption feels particularly irritating because Grace’s career has largely been defined by movement.
Independent wrestling. Britain. TNA. Australia. Japan. WWE.
She has been champion, challenger, attraction, monster and occasionally the person whose job is to make somebody else look extraordinary.
And yes, Jordynne Grace can reportedly bench press 210 pounds (95kg). It is a remarkable number, and an extremely searchable one.
Her career has been more interesting than the number.
The best Jordynne Grace matches aren’t merely exhibitions of strength. They are matches in which strength creates the initial problem and everything else has to solve it. Purrazzo attacked an arm. Slamovich survived the Juggernaut Driver. Hashimoto tried to overpower her. Giulia simply hit her back. Monroe brought scissors, diamonds and a cage because apparently conventional escalation had been exhausted.
Grace’s greatest trick has been making the Juggernaut beatable without making her ordinary.
A little like Mechagodzilla, really. The machinery and weaponry attract the attention, but the interesting part begins when somebody works out where to hit it.
Grace lifts, falls, rises.
Old rivals remember scars.
The ring waits again.
doragon sports 