Jordynne Grace Reveals Her Goals as Knockouts Champion Ahead of TNA No Surrender

Jordynne Grace is one of the flag-bearers as TNA embarks on its new era. Grace captured the TNA Knockouts Championship this past January at TNA Hard to Kill, the first pay-per-view under the TNA banner in over seven years. While this began Grace’s third reign with her employer’s top women’s championship, it was the first time she was holding the TNA-branded version of the Knockouts Championship.

Speaking to ComicBook.com, Grace reflected on her emotions during the day of TNA Hard to Kill ahead of her marquee match.

“I just felt overwhelmed by everything. I mean when you’re there, you’re worrying about not just the match, but how you’re representing yourself and the company backstage, and oftentimes that’s more important than what you actually do in the ring,” Grace said. “I was really just trying not to step on toes, being as nice as I could. I think I shook every person’s hand in the building probably 10 times each, just because I wanted to make sure I didn’t forget anyone. It was very overwhelming.”

Grace’s TNA Knockouts Championship victory came one year to the day after her last reign with the gold ended.

“I feel a lot more confident,” Grace said when asked how much she’s changed since her last run as champion. “I’ve been at TNA for six years and I feel like everything that I’ve done there has got me to this point. I feel like the opportunities they’ve given me to show what I can do and to learn more, both in the ring and out of the ring, I really felt a hundred percent prepared in that aspect. The only thing that I was really nervous about was just the backstage interactions. You never know what someone thinks about you, and especially with social media now, there’s all kinds of things that could be misconstrued. Backstage and in the ring, I’m a walking wrestling advertisement, If I don’t do well, that’s going to reflect badly on my company and I don’t want that at all.”

Representing TNA has already come in big ways for Grace. Just weeks after winning the TNA Knockouts Championship, Grace competed in the WWE Women’s Royal Rumble Match, following in Mickie James’s footsteps.

“My biggest goal now is to hopefully get more fans to watch the product,” Grace said when asked about what she hopes comes from her Royal Rumble appearance. “Because if you think that I’m a decent wrestler, there are wrestlers that we have like Josh Alexander, Mike Bailey, these are guys that are just incredible wrestlers. I feel like if fans are going to tune in because of me, they need to stick around for guys like that because those guys deserve all the eyes in the world on them.”

While Grace’s latest reign as TNA Knockouts Champion is just beginning, she’s proven before that she can hold that championship for the long run. Her longest Knockouts Title reign lasted 208 days, the fifth-longest reign in the title’s history, 69 days behind Taya Valkyrie’s record 377-day reign.

“It would be a huge honor to be the longest reigning Knockouts World Champion,” Grace said. “It’s definitely a dream of mine. I also would love to have the most title defenses in that time out of any knockout. I just want to have good, great matches with as many women as I possibly can.”

Grace’s next defense comes against Gisele Shaw at TNA No Surrender which streams live on TNA+ tonight at 8 PM ET.