Former Impact Knockouts Champion Tasha Steelz was a recent guest on Busted Open Radio, where she revealed that she pushed for having the Knockouts Ultimate X match, a match that she eventually won.
Steelz recalled that she and Jordynne Grace pushed for the match for almost a year: “This is something that a lot of people weren’t expecting us women to do. I believe since last year, Jordynne Grace and I were bugging the hell out of Scott. We were backstage like, ‘we can do it, we can do it, we can do it.’ Slammiversary, we saw the structure go up for the guys and we climbed up there ourselves. ‘Scott, we can do this, you have to give us this match.’ It’s not like he immediately said ‘no,’ but I knew just looking at his face and watching us climb up there, the wheels were turning, we just didn’t know when. When it did get announced, for me, the butterflies went. ‘I have to be in this. This is my time and my moment.’ If we keep talking about it and want this match, it’s something that I needed to do and wanted to prove we are out here and can do just as much as the guys can do, if not better. This was at the top of the list. Anything else, hell yeah we can do it. If we can do the [Ultimate X], we can do anything the guys can do.”
The reaction backstage was very emotional as the match gave the girls a sense of accomplishment: “After all is said and done, the emotions came out of all of us. We were all backstage bawling our eyes out. You know me, I’m a thug and I don’t like to cry, but I couldn’t help it. It’s one of those things where people were doubting that we couldn’t do it, but we did do it and no one got seriously injured or hurt. We put our bodies on the line we accomplished the match and we got all the chants. Backstage, that emotion, we just had a group hug and said, ‘we did it.’ That emotion came out of me and I was happy with everything we accomplished.”
