When she appeared at Homecoming, Rosemary had spent nearly a year away from Impact. We, the fans, were missing her but, we, as Rosemary loves to say, were missing being in a ring even more. But we are back, trying to save Allie’s soul from The Undead Realm, fighting the monsters and freaks of the Kingdom of the Immortals to save her dear friend. We competed in her first match back in the Impact Zone a few weeks ago, a Dark War to save Allie’s soul. But it was not enough as we’re going to the Undead Realm back this week (review to come very soon…), to make the Bunny come back. For sure, we, Rosemary, are back and, if it can be bad news for the Knockouts roster, the fans couldn’t be happier.

SteelChair Magazine had the chance to talk to Rosemary a few days ago. She talked about her being back on Impact, her current storyline that led to this Dark War, her upcoming match at United We Stand, and signing a new contract with the company that lets he be the wrestler she is.

You’d been away for nearly a year due to an injury. How are you and were you able to reflect on your career, your character and the business during that long time?

We’re fine, thank you very much. Honestly, it was a dreadful time and we were not ready to look back at our career, that’s something down the road when we’re winding up but we’re not even close to being winding up. We’re ready to fight now, all you want is to be in the ring and battle and pray our body not to be betraying us and keeping us away for what we really love. It’s dreadful, so no, we weren’t looking back, we were overlooking forward. It is moving forward, continually moving forward, getting better, getting rehabilitation and looking forward to that day when we could return.

During that long year, how did you enjoy Impact while being away from it?

Yes, we watched it every week. Some weeks, it was very difficult to watch because we just wanted to be there and we want to be a part of it. Some weeks, we would watch and it would encourage us and we would be even more determined to get back into the ring and be back into the ring. Yes, we feel like, if we may be so bold, there was perhaps a hole (laughs) that we particularly felt, with our presence, and it makes us feel wanted, feel like we have a place in the company, that nobody else could take our spot. So when we returned, it was so great for us, all of that made sense.

I felt like Impact rolled out the red carpet for Rosemary to come back with this supernatural storyline with Allie and Su because, if someone definitely has to be in this storyline, it was you. Why is Allie’s soul so important for you to come back to the Undead Realm and to struggle that much to find it back and save the Bunny?

We’re not going to be deterred from it. Aside from our own personal feelings, there are the shadows orders and the shadows have ordered us to retrieve the Bunny soul, the body is meant to be under
our protection and she has been in danger of the entire time we’ve been gone, probably because she was in the hands of the darkness consumer but here we are. Regardless of the fact of what she did and what she didn’t do, it is still our job to protect her and, until her soul is reunited with her meat suit, she is still not whole and, therefore, it is up to us to recover it and take care of her. So we really don’t have a choice that returning to the Undead Realm, as that is what it takes and that’s what it takes. So we are going to go and we are going to end this, once and for all.

Huge question, who is “Him”?

“Him” is the Boss of the Immortals, the Proprietor of the Undead Realm if you would. Apparently, he is the one who holds Allie’s soul in hostage. So we have to go and speak to him, that’s we will do.

At the same time, what is it to work with James Mitchell, even if you worked with him before? 

We just spoke about us actually. It’s very interesting because James Mitchell is somebody who, to us, is both an ally and an enemy, both somebody we admire. James Mitchell is, of course, the father of our dear Brother Monster Abyss, we look up to James Mitchell as somewhat of a father figure ourselves, somewhat of a mentor. And at the same time, he’s in the corner of the Undead Bride which therefore depicts him as an enemy. It’s difficult because we do have an affection for the man but, as of this moment, he’s in our way.

What do you think about the new Knockouts that made their debut with Impact while you were taking care of yourself, like Jordynne, Kiera, Tessa?

The landscape has changed quite a bit since we were there, hasn’t it? The departures of Laurel Van Ness and Sienna and, at the same time, the incoming of Tessa Blanchard and Jordynne Grace and Kiera Hogan and Scarlett Bordeaux,  everything has changed since we have been there. It’s sad to see a change but it’s also exciting to have change. Battles that we have yet to ever have engaged and we’ve never fought Kiera Hogan, Jordynne Grace, Tessa Blanchard or Scarlett Bordeaux. These are all new and exciting Knockouts that are on the horizon and the potential for new wars and new battles and new ways to improve ourselves so, in that way, it’s very exciting.

Just a few weeks after you were back, we all learnt that you signed a new contract and you would stay with impact for a few more years. Do you feel like Impact is your home? 

It is. It is my family of mystery, the company refuses to go down and continue to plug forward and just do our own thing and that’s one of the reasons we wanted to stay in Impact because we do get so much freedom to express ourselves and our ‘unique style’. What we bring to the ring might be suppressed in other places and in Impact, we’re encouraged to freely go and be ourselves out there. We always have been from starts always very much encouraged, from the moment Decay was born to bring our own creative input to the group and to our own individual looks and our look as a whole. I never thought whether it was us as a group or Rosemary in the single competition, we’re very much allowed to express ourselves the way we wanted to and that’s very important to us, obviously.

Outside of making Allie come back from the Undead Realm, what are your goals with Impact now that you are back?

My main goal this week is to return to the Undead Realm because, as you’ve seen in the past couple of weeks when we won Allie from James Mitchell, it’s not the Bunny, it is an empty meat suit and the soul is still trapped in the Undead Realm. So naturally, we will be returning to try and make that right. That is the goal right now, we’re not concentrated on anything else. Everything culminates this week and it’s definitely worth watching so we would encourage everybody to join us into a return to the Undead Realm this weekend. Let’s face it, if we don’t get that soul back, the Bunny is not going anywhere.

I have to confess, and I said it to our readers, I didn’t recognize you when you came back but when I saw you wrestling the Dark War, I knew it was you. Would you forgive me, dear Demon Assassin?

We appreciate you feeling guilty right now, and we love you even more because we will tell you that until that moment in the Dark War, even though we had returned on screen and we were engaging in the show, that Dark War was our first match back. So until that moment, until we actually got to taste battle again, you could make the argument that we didn’t know if it was us as well, because do you really know who you are until you test yourselves in battle? And since we were forged in battle the only way to know if it is truly us is if we perform in war once again.

So you could make the argument that maybe it wasn’t us until we fought again. It was a show of ourselves, a segment, a sector perhaps, but until we engaged in battle, there was no way to truly know if it was us, from the fans perspective and from our perspective as well, but now that we fought again all we can think about is fighting and because with every battle our body moves better, we’re moving more smoothly in the ring, we’re getting stronger, we’re getting faster, we’re getting back into the shape that we were before the injury. As you touched on, when you are injured and when you’re out that long, obviously your body does not maintain the kind of shape that you were in when you were at the peak of your physical presence. It’s slowly coming back, excruciatingly slowly, but we are not going to let that deter us, we’re going to continue moving forward.

‘United We Stand’ is taking place next week, you have a match against Jordynne, Taya and Katie Forbes. What are your thoughts about this match and this amazing card stacked of dream matches?

The match itself is exciting, not only because as a Four-Way it is creating an environment of not knowing where to look and having multiple opponents is always an exciting environment. But the main thing is it puts us again in the direct line of battle with an old rival in Taya Valkyrie, with whom I have many battles. I’ve enjoyed every single one of them and we push each other to near breaking points and it was the last major feud we had before we got injured. So now that we’re back, we’re getting to step back into the ring with Taya, so it’s very exciting. With the added element of two more competitors into that ring, we’re very much looking forward.

Even if the rest of the show wasn’t as, how you mortals say, stacked as it is, there are so many wonderful matches, perhaps the one besides our own, we all are looking forward to the most because we always find them very exciting in a specified nature, it’s the Ultimate X match. It’s always fun to see the Ultimate-X match, for sure, and to have it returned at United We Stand in front of that kind of audience and the first stage-worthy of the Ultimate-X really and on pay-per-view as well, you’d be hard-pressed to find a reason not to tune in to this pay-per-view.

Follow Rosemary on Twitter @WeAreRosemary. All pics and screencaps courtesy of Impact Wrestling.