AEW star Thunder Rosa talks pro wrestling journey from social worker to women's champion

Thunder Rosa is one of the best women’s professional wrestlers in the world, but the journey to get to the top of the mountain is one that is never-ending.

Rosa, whose real name is Melissa Cervantes, performs for All Elite Wrestling (AEW) and Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL), two of the major promotions in North America. But while most professional wrestlers started their path to the ring at a school, Rosa was a social worker before wrestling caught her eye.

"I became a pro wrestler 13 years ago after making a decision to stop being an activist. I was a social worker, so, one day, I decided that I wanted to be a wrestler after going to a wrestling show and just attending a couple of the shows there and feeling that was the next step to take," she told Fox News Digital in a recent interview. 

"I feel like the call was like — it was going to be a bigger platform. I just decided to go and do a tryout, and after I did the tryout, I fell in love with professional wrestling."

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Rosa said the aura of pro wrestling is what got her hooked in the first place, everything from the theatrics to the sport.

She said she was up for the challenge even though she never played many sports in her life.

"It's everything. It's all the details, all the different things that the sport entails, which is, you know, the theatricals, the level of athleticism," she said. "It's just like the fact that you could travel with it and also because it's very challenging. It was going to be very challenging for me physically because I never done, like, sports, and I just felt like I could do it at the time."

Rosa said she had to start from scratch, "learning how to roll, learning how to exercise, learning how to build my body, learning, like, body control, a lot of like gymnastics, basics on many different sports, and I think I just had to like really pull it together and then really be realistic with myself." 

She said she needed to work harder than anyone in her training classes because most of the time she was the only woman in the class if not the room.

She said there was never one moment she could point to where she knew taking a chance on pro wrestling was the right move. It wasn’t until she noticed she didn’t have time to go to her day job that she thought she could make a career out of wrestling.

"There’s not really a moment because I feel like when you're getting and you're earning things, sometimes you feel like you have an imposter syndrome. And no matter what you have done, like, it's just like not enough, right?" Rosa told Fox News Digital 

"I feel like that even when big opportunities came, it was like, ‘Oh, I'm so lucky that this happened to me.’ No, I wasn't lucky. It's just people saw that I had the skills and I had the talent and I had the ‘it’ factor, and they gave me an opportunity.

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"I feel like once things started rolling with bigger opportunities in professional wrestling, that's when I was like, 'OK, I think I can leave my full-time job and become a professional wrestler.’ I think it was my first contract with Lucha Underground when I just noticed that I didn't have enough time to go to work. 

"That was the time where it was it was time for me to move my next chapter of my life and my career. So, that's when I think I was like, ‘OK, I think I can do this. I think it's feasible. It's going to be hard, but it's feasible.’"

Rosa joined AEW in 2020 and started to defend the National Wrestling Alliance Women’s Championship on "Dynamite." She lost the title to Serena Deeb. She would gain AEW World Women’s Championship gold for the first time when she defeated Britt Baker in a cage match.

She was the fifth woman to hold the title. However, she had to relinquish it due to a back injury.

Rosa told Fox News Digital she took pride in helping women’s wrestling grow.

"It's been really beautiful to see the journey that a lot of us have taken in the last six years here in AEW or even seven because we’ve seen something small grow so big to the point where we have had shows that have had 80,000 people," she said. 

"The way that we or I was able to help the women's division and grow and given a bigger platform with opportunities that have a lot at stake. I take that with a lot of pride. There was a lot of things that happened in 2021-2022 that really broke a lot of barriers for a lot of the women that are now in the women's division, and they all have done a tremendous job on continuing to open more doors for everyone that is coming in the future.

"It's been also incredibly interesting to see how different companies have worked together, and now they are symbiotic of each other. They exist and subsist with each other's collaboration, and that, I think, has changed the landscape of professional wrestling forever because we're not living on an island. 

"I feel like this subculture or this culture of professional wrestling has subsisted within this niche, but I feel it's becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. So, that has been very interesting to see how AEW has been pivotal for that stuff."

Rosa vowed to continue to use her voice to advocate for women and children, which she stressed was important to her. She also said she is focused on the latter part of the year with Grand Slam Mexico.

"I have a lot of things planned. I continue to work extremely hard every single day to be better at my craft. I continue to work really, really, really hard outside of professional wrestling to advocate for women and for young children because I think that's something very, very important, and to advocate for my community. I continue to focus on the opportunities that are in front of me," she said.

"Right now, we're going to focus, like, laser focus, on Grand Slam in Mexico City. Then, there's some big things happening in September, October during Dia de Los Muertos and, like, all that stuff. There's a lot of opportunities to come during that time. So, I’m taking everything day by day and, of course, I want gold, but that is not on me. I'll just have to continue to work harder and continue to knock on doors. 

"Even when I lose, I always win. And the last Forbidden Door, we had a tremendous match with Divine Dominion and with Olympia. We always leave something for the fans to remember. Again, I will continue to work extremely hard to hopefully have gold in the future, but if not, I will enjoy the journey just as much."