Tiffany Nieves: From Underdog To Undeniable [Exclusive]

NWA star Tiffany Nieves spoke with The Takedown about her career, her battle with cancer, and what it's like to succeed against all odds.

Tiffany Nieves / Ricky Flores

Tiffany Nieves lives by a powerful philosophy: "Stay beautiful." It’s more than just a mantra for her. It reflects her resilience, determination and grace that has guided her through a tumultuous life – where she spent plenty of time as an outcast and underdog.

Nieves’ path to where she is now, as one of NWA’s fastest-growing stars, included difficult financial situations, and even a cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment.

“I was not sent here to fit in,” Nieves told me in an exclusive conversation for The Takedown. “I was not sent here to follow. I got sick to be an example. I got sick to share stories. I got sick to inspire people.”

“I really believe in God, and I said, ‘When you don't follow his path, he's going to get you right there.’”

11 years cancer free, Nieves is redefining what it means to thrive as an underdog in professional wrestling and in life.

Her origin story starts in the Bronx. As a young child, feeling stifled in a strict Catholic school, the only time she felt like she could express herself was when she watched wrestling.

Tiffany Nieves (on ring ropes) / Hiban Huerta

“I didn't have an identity when I went to Catholic school,” she says. “I had to dress a type of way. Stand in line, be a certain way. But when I went home, I ripped that uniform off and it was wrestling time. You could just be rowdy, raunchy and loud and just hyper. And it was a part of the culture as a wrestling fan, so I felt like I fit in.”

Nieves couldn’t be a part of any extracurricular activities due to her family’s income status. Nevertheless, she persisted. She ended up at a community college, majoring in art history. Things seemed to be on track, until one day during volleyball practice, she noticed she couldn’t rotate her right arm the way she normally could.

Nieves knew something was off. She also found herself getting sicker more than she had been before. Biopsies, over a dozen doctors’ visits, 24 different medications – no one could figure out what was wrong with her, and nothing was helping.

It wasn’t until she saw a doctor at Harvard University who took interest in her case that they figured out what was really going on – Stage Two B-cell Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

Though the news was understandably terrifying to her family, Nieves was thrilled, in a way, to have any diagnosis at all. And while she struggled with depression through the ordeal, Nieves made a friend during chemotherapy, a young girl named Nina who was battling brain cancer.

“I remember thinking, ‘Man, she's just so lucky.’ She’s so lucky because I was sitting across from her and two years old or three years older. My parents were separated. I just got taken off health insurance, so I didn't have health insurance. My mom had just lost her job because she's now taking care of me, and [Nina's] sitting with her parents who are married, and they're together, and she had hair, and I didn't.”

Nieves says that, due to her family's financial status and a lack of support from the community, paying for treatment was challenging. However, Nina was so supported by the community during her treatment that she was able to provide a life changing gift to Nieves. A surprise $6,000 gift that not only allowed Nieves to get the treatment she needed, but it allowed her and her friends to make bracelets to help fund the holistic treatment she needed after her chemotherapy was complete. The bracelets read "Stay Beautiful."

After a combination of the chemotherapy and holistic treatments, Nieves was cancer free. 11 years later, Nieves is in a much better space to discuss her cancer, and feels lucky to have beaten it.

"It feels so surreal [to have 11 years cancer free] and I'm actually embracing it now. I'm smiling in a genuine moment because it has been 11 years. It feels really good. I'm very lucky, but I will say I'm not perfect. So there's that 1% of me that knows how good it feels, that I don't want to give it up. It is also is a moving, defining force that helps push me every day to do as much as I can possible so that I can be in front of as many people as possible performing."

She credits Nina with saving her life – and her gratitude for Nina’s gift is mixed with the sadness knowing that she survived her ordeal while Nina did not.

Tiffany Nieves / Roland Lugo

“Nina died at the age of 16, and I still live on,” Nieves says. “This is someone who I remember once thinking, ‘Wow, she is so lucky,’ and I feel I'm the lucky one now being alive, having this interview with you, you know?"

With a new perspective and a second chance of sorts being cancer free, Nieves focused herself on making up for the lost youth after being so sick for so long. She ended up making a poor choice, one that landed her in an overnight stay in jail. It was then she realized that she had a higher purpose. Nieves course corrected. She went back to school to become a massage therapist and enrolled in some acting classes. After finding her way to South Florida into a program called Flatbacks, she ended up at Ohio Valley Wrestling, training under Al Snow. It was during this time that OVW was being featured on Netflix, in a show called “Wrestlers.”

“I remember the first day I went to OVW,” Nieves says. “I don't know if it was a test, because that's one of the [ways] you have to pay your dues. I got a huge black eye the first day that almost made me want to quit the business. I thought I was going to go blind from a really simple move that shouldn't have [gone wrong]. It was gnarly. I remember telling Al Snow, ‘I can't perform in front of the Netflix cameras and make my big debut.’’

#ANDNEW @ovwrestling #OVW WOMANS CHAMPION 💋 pic.twitter.com/f7xjgJrBbL

— Tiffany Nieves | Wrestler 🇵🇷 (@TiffanyNieves_) October 12, 2023

“He said ‘Kid, if you want to learn to make money in this business, you're going to perform tomorrow and you're not going to take any bumps,’” she continues. “And I had no idea how I was going to do that. I was like, ‘how can I do a wrestling match without impacting?’ How can I put on a good show, make a debut in front of Netflix cameras and not take one bump? He goes, ‘You better figure it out.’ That was one of the first many lessons Al taught me.”

Nieves continued to pay her dues in OVW, losing in matches and putting other talent over. Her underdog story continued, losing for one year straight, until her perseverance paid off, and landed her in a championship main event where she captured the OVW Women’s Championship. It was another defining moment in a lifetime of overcoming the odds.

HISTORY WILL BE MADE 👑https://t.co/e6CIqywdLf pic.twitter.com/fPTqMzpeTl

— Tiffany Nieves | Wrestler 🇵🇷 (@TiffanyNieves_) October 3, 2024

“When I went the whole year, never getting that main event opportunity, never getting a title opportunity meant that much more,” she says. “The day I did main event as a female, I main event the whole entire show and it was a championship match and I won the title. It was incredible, so it tells you like the triumph is everything. The ‘no quitting’ is everything.”

Nieves made her way to Mission Pro Wrestling, an all female wrestling promotion headed by former AEW Women’s Champion Thunder Rosa. After initially turning it down, Nieves agreed to take the chance and went on an undefeated streak with MPW, culminating in a MPW Championship run that lasted 308 days.

“She has a work ethic,” Rosa says of Nieves. “She has a great story. She doesn't give up. She just wants to work. She puts herself out there, and she does a lot of sacrificing to do that.”

“I can't thank [Thunder Rosa] enough for the company, and the opportunity it has brought,” Nieves says. “Mission Pro Wrestling was the first place ever to give me a microphone to cut a promo. They were the first ever to get the version of ‘La Princesa’ ever. That's just another place that I felt like I had to pay my dues, and then I didn't understand the value of it until a year later. I'm their champion, you know? So that was pretty phenomenal.”

Former WWE Women’s Champion Jazz was the agent for one of Nieves’ MPW matches, and then connected her with a potential opportunity with NWA. Then came a seminar with Mickie James, who was so impressed with Nieves’ work, she refunded her payment. Within a year, she had signed to NWA.

“Tiffany is a star in the making,” NWA president and owner Billy Corgan said about Nieves. “And to be a star in the making, a talent has to have that X factor or charisma that makes an audience pay extra attention. In that, she has worked very hard to improve every facet of her game because she also has the ambition of a star.”

If I said it, I meant it 🫰🏽💅🏽 pic.twitter.com/my77cuuJmI

— Tiffany Nieves | Wrestler 🇵🇷 (@TiffanyNieves_) September 9, 2024

Nieves continues to blaze her path through NWA, and is set to make history this Saturday, December 14, as she faces Natalia Markova in the first ever women’s cage match to take place in the state of Alabama. It’s another win in a lifetime of overcoming the odds and proving that being an underdog isn’t where she’ll ever be pigeonholed.

“When I was living in the Bronx, it was survival all the time. And now that I'm post-cancer, I refuse for anyone to ever think that being the underdog is going to keep me there. Being the underdog isn't a curse, and I'm not going to let anyone force me to believe that. Being the underdog is the free education and knowledge that I get to have for appreciation and being genuine to everything in my life.”

It’s Nieves’ rugged self-assurance, the knowledge that everything is going to work out, somehow and someway, that has elevated her from underdog to undeniable.

“Tiffany has an unflappable faith in herself,” Corgan says. “And perhaps she was born [that] way or her health struggles in the past illuminated that faith. As well, she’s a team player behind the scenes; a quality which I find very admirable.”

“She deserves the world,” Rosa says. “She works hard for it.”

Tiffany Nieves vs. Natalia Markova match promo / NWA

Nieves never gave up, she stayed persistent and determined to make her dreams come true. Through all the struggles and roadblocks, she never forgot where she came from, how different things could have been, and she stayed beautiful. Nieves wants others struggling with their own issues to know that no matter how bad things may feel, courage will always get you through.

“You will forever be remembered for your courage,” Nieves says. “Always, always in life. Your courage will be the most important thing about you. So have the courage to follow any dream, any thought, any idea you have. No matter how scary it feels, no matter how alone you feel. Have the courage. Nothing is ever happening to you. It's happening for you. As long as you have courage and belief in yourself, that's what you'll be remembered for."

NWA Looks That Kill takes place on Saturday, December 14 from the Dothan Civic Center in Dothan, Alabama. It can be streamed on the NWA's official X account.