SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Thunder Rosa is La Mera, Mera (the boss) of All Elite Wrestling.
She’s had many trips down the ramp to the squared circle, but her recent stroll on March 16 was a historic one. She was on her way to fight to become the first Mexican-born woman to win a world wrestling championship in a major United States promotion.
Rosa came out to a women’s mariachi group playing as she sported a black sombrero while being wrapped with the Texas and Mexico flags. She was more than ready.
Prior to her big night, she sat with Spectrum News 1 and talked about being a three-count away from history.
“I’ve been crying all weekend, the possibility to know that Thunder Rosa, or the Rosa name is going to be put in history forever,” Rosa said. “It’s huge. They can’t take that away from me, nobody.”
Her main event title match on the nationally televised AEW Dynamite was at the Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio, the city that adopted her from Tijuana, Mexico.
She became a wrestling fan after her husband and her co-worker would take her to shows when she was a social worker. That career path drained her mentally and emotionally, so wrestling became something she tried, which is out of her element, considering her parents never let her play sports.
As she started making a name for herself in the independent circuit, she noticed that there was still a disparity of women in the wrestling business.
“Well it’s just like the whole process, the reason why I moved to Texas because I felt there was no women’s representation in the business,” Rosa said.
She’s cultivating the next generation of women’s wrestlers through her Texas all-women’s promotion, Mission Pro Wrestling, where the photographers, the referees, the commentators and talent themselves are all women.
“Told my husband, we gave up everything we had, and while we were driving I said, ‘We are going to make one of the most influential groups in wrestling,’” Rosa said.
So as she entered that cage in San Antonio she knew she wasn’t only fighting to make history, it wasn’t even just for the AEW Women’s World Championship, it was to take women’s wrestling to the next level.
“There’s a lot more things we can do in terms of equality of women, equality within the people of color and a lot more stuff that can be done,” Rosa said.
Her grueling match with Dr. Britt Baker consisted of chairs, thumb tacks and blood, but in the end, Thunder Rosa became the new AEW Women’s World Champion.
“Not for me, but for my people, for anyone, like any immigrant that comes here and feels like their calling is here. That they can see another example that hard work pays off,” Rosa said.