Dani Luna on why TNA Wrestling is 'exactly what I needed' after WWE NXT UK run

At 24 years young, Dani Luna has been wrestling for nearly a decade but it feels like her career is truly just beginning. 

After beginning at just 16, Luna got her first big break as part of the now-defunct WWE NXT UK when she was 19 -- just three years after she began training.

Luna now finds herself as a full-time member of the TNA Wrestling roster with title aspirations on her goals for 2024.

In our 20-minute interview you can watch on YouTube above, Luna and I talked about her TNA pay-per-view debut in a high-risk match, her NXT UK run, and those aforementioned goals.

She believes being with TNA is "exactly what I needed at this point in my career."

"It was terrifying more than anything."

The England native signed with TNA Wrestling in December 2023 after working for the company during both their Canadian and UK tours earlier that year.

She made her PPV debut at January's Hard to Kill in an Ultimate X match with five other women for a future Knockouts title shot.

While she said the opportunity was "cool," she also said it was more "terrifying than anything" due to fear about falling off the structure -- something she wished she had done earlier than later in the match to get it out of her system.

"...The fear of falling off of that thing is so much worse than actually falling off of it. But, it was it was so cool...the amount of things you can do in a match like that. If you think of all the things you can do in a match and then you add six other people and then you add this huge structure that you can all hang off of....there's just so many ways to get around it."

"And obviously I was sharing it with some incredible women too, lots of women that I had never even wrestled before. So that was a whole thing in itself. But yeah, it was crazy. It was it was a great time, but I reckon I'd like to do another one, but maybe not loads of them."

The night was a big one for TNA as it was the first following their rebrand from Impact Wrestling back to their iconic naming convention. The match was also first on the PPV, something that wasn't lost on Luna.

"It did really kind of throw me into the deep end a little bit. So many people that might not have even been watching TNA at the time who tuned in because this was the first PPV back, and then I'm one of the first people they see and they might not have even never heard of me. So, it was a really nice way and a really good showcase for me to show what I'm all about in a really exciting way."

Luna is still early in her TNA run, but has already found a friend in Jody Threat. The two teamed up last month and Threat backed her up following her win over Killer Kelly on Thursday's Impact. It's a partnership she hopes has gold in its future.

"I think our goal for 2024 is to win the Knockouts Tag Team Championships and I don't think that's completely out of left field. I think is absolutely something we could do. I think we're starting to build a really good tag division in TNA now and I would love to get there on a bigger stage with her. She's one of my favorite people in the world so I would love to hold gold with her in TNA this year." 

The NXT UK years

Luna first became a fan of wrestling when she was 14 after her brother introduced her to it. Two years later, she was in wrestling school at just 16. Three years after that, she was signed to a WWE deal for the NXT UK brand where she made her home from 2019 through 2022.

She went on to say that while she learned a lot in NXT UK, she was too young to be on a stage of that level and that it was a lot to handle.

"I don't think I was necessarily ready for that sort of stage at my age and my experience level, but it gave me so many tools that I think now I can bring to somewhere like TNA where I'm a bit more grown up, a bit more experienced, and a lot more prepared for it."