When Stephanie Cardona, aka Red Velvet, tells you that she’s a fighter, believe her.
Some haven’t, and they found out the truth quickly.
“Sometimes people think that they can try me because I’m small until I’m like, all right, bring it,” said Cardona, all 5-foot-2 of her, not 5-foot-1 like the internet wants you to believe. “If I learned anything, having fighters in my family and from my first fight ever, when the girl was actually huge, and I thought she was going to beat my a$s and then I beat her, was that you never underestimate yourself.
“If you underestimate yourself, now everybody thinks they can underestimate you,” she continues. “And then what? So I always go, and I’m ready to take a punch. I’m ready to get knocked down. I’ve gotten knocked down a bunch of times. That’s not going to stop me. People who think that, they’re just going to be in a real street fight. I feel sometimes people haven’t gotten into a real fight, so they think I’m small, but I’m scrappy. I will get down with you in the paint all day, every day. Don’t press me.”
That attitude has made Red Velvet one of the top rising stars in the pro wrestling business, with stints in AEW (All Elite Wrestling) and Ring of Honor (ROH) raising her profile with every appearance. And despite being sidelined by injury as of late, she expects to return to the ring sooner rather than later to continue a career that has already produced some big things. But she wants more.
“I want to continue to defend my belt, the Ring of Honor Women’s TV title,” Cardona told FightsATW of her plans for the rest of 2025. “I am the second-ever champ, the first-ever Latina champ, and the longest reigning right now. So I’m going to keep defending that until somebody takes it from me. And this year, for me, as a wrestler, is just about full growth and showing people what I can do. Not only that, I want to have a hand in helping continue to pave the way for the women. I feel like a lot of people say that, but I want to be the change I wish to see now for the women and for wrestling in general.”
Cardona, 33, has the potential to hit all her marks, in and out of the ring, yet it’s funny that she’s here because if not for some twists and turns, the former dancer might have been competing in a different kind of ring, the one her father and uncle dominated back in the 70s and 80s.
Her dad, Prudencio, was a WBC and The Ring Magazine flyweight boxing champion, and her uncle, Ricardo, was the WBA super bantamweight champion. It may have seemed to be a foregone conclusion that Stephanie would have continued in the family business, but that wasn’t the case.
A little over three weeks before his last bout against Darryl Pinckney in June of 1992, Stephanie was born, and while Prudencio would eventually take his daughter to the gym when he worked as a trainer, nothing went beyond that until a family friend intervened.
“I never physically got to go to any of his matches, which I wish I did,” she said. “I do remember watching him train early, really, really early. He used to go out and jog with my dog and jump rope and all that. And then, as I got older, he used to take me with him to train other boxers. But I never knew enough about boxing to say right away that I wanted to do it. But then my dad’s best friend at the time was like, ‘You have two girls. I’m taking my kid to an MMA self-defense class, and if you don’t have the money or whatever, it’s cool; don’t worry about it. I’m taking your daughters with me.’ And I think him saying that to my dad and then my dad jumping on board was the best thing that he could ever do.”
Cardona, now a teenager, eagerly embraced the gym life in Miami, even after getting a rude awakening from an older training partner.
“I got in the ring to spar with a 20-year-old, and she was one of the best at the time,” she recalls. “I don’t think she ever went off to the big leagues, unfortunately, but she beat my a$s. (Laughs) I had a protection thing on, but it was a realization. And after that, I liked it, and I was just like, okay, I don’t know as much, but I have to learn, and my dad did it and all this stuff. It encouraged me, but I don’t know if I ever said, I’m going to box.”
Cardona did want to test her new knowledge and skills in a live environment, though, but soon, Mom intervened.
“She was just like, ‘You’re so young, you’re a girl, there’s too many hits to the head.’”
It was early on that Cardona realized what boxing had taken from her father. “For as much of my memory that I can remember, his hands were always shaking,” she said.
The effects of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s took the beloved champion in 2019 at the age of 67. Having 64 pro fights didn’t help him, especially when Cardona came up in an era where fighters fought, usually against top-level competition, night in and night out. Stephanie Cardona saw her dad’s decline, but she had already decided that boxing was not her path. She had other plans.
“I had started watching wrestling with my mom, and she said that I told her flat out at nine years old that I was going to be a wrestler,” said Cardona. “I kind of remember, but I don’t. (Laughs) But she says I was very adamant about it, and I think it’s funny how life works out. Everything works out how it’s supposed to. I always said I am not continuing my father’s legacy. I’m making my own. So I think that’s special either way because it’s in my blood to be a fighter. I’m not the same type of fighter as my dad, but I’m a fighter through and through.”
That’s evident watching her in the ring, but more notably, what she’s had to overcome just to walk through the ropes. That’s the side most don’t see, making it quite the insult when people say, “Oh, wrestling’s fake.”
“My body has been put on the line,” she said. “There’s nothing fake about that. And I always tell them, two knee surgeries, a concussion, ankle injuries, back injuries, head injuries, yeah, it’s fake, don’t worry about it. Sometimes, they’re just trying to downplay what you do, and it’s almost like they’re doing it to insult me. So I just don’t let it insult me. I’m just like, have you taken a class? Have you done any sports? Have you ever fallen willingly on your back? Okay, so you just don’t understand. So I don’t try to give it that attention anymore. I just always feel like it’s said to me or another wrestler in a negative way. Some people don’t know they’re saying it because they’re just being ignorant. Again, they don’t even really know about the sport or about the entertainment business and what it takes.”
Cardona knows what it takes, and she’s been all-in to get to where she wants to go in a tough business. It would have made Dad proud to see his daughter’s talent and work ethic taking her to places only a few can dream of. Prudencio hit those places during his career. Sadly, he never got to see his daughter wrestle, but Stephanie believes he would have embraced her journey to the fullest.
“When I turned 18, my dad’s Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s got worse,” she said. “So it just got really dangerous for him to go around. He was going for a walk and forgetting where he lived, and it just got really bad.”
The family decided the best course of action was for him to retire to his home in Colombia, and that’s what he did. Stephanie went to visit him, but his health issues had progressed.
“I went to go visit him in 2012, and he almost had no idea who I was,” she said. “It just got really bad, really fast. So it was sad. He never got to see me wrestle. He always watched me dance, and he always was like, ‘You’re going to be a star. No matter what you do, you’re always going to be a star.’ So, I guess this is a little bit of honoring what he did. I’m emotional thinking about it, but I always just say that he could see from above what I’ve done. My dad was full of so much personality, and I was way too young to appreciate it at the time, but he was just so charismatic. I always said if my dad was alive and he was still in a good state of mind when I started wrestling, he would’ve been my manager, hands down. I think that would’ve been great.”
If anything is evident about the person behind Red Velvet, it’s that Stephanie Cardona is an old soul. There’s a wisdom to her about life that 33-year-olds shouldn’t have yet.
She laughs.
“I wholeheartedly believe that,” she said. “I always felt, even as a younger kid, that I don’t fit in my body. My mind was way too aware for my age, but I’m grateful now. Now, I’m like, oh, it’s my little superpower. Maybe I was somebody else in another life, who knows. But talking about this stuff with my dad is knowledge for people. There are a lot of people going through that, and maybe they don’t know or they don’t think about it. I always think about that stuff. I just think now I’m older, and I took some time to do therapy, so I use a lot of the stuff that’s happened in my life. Somehow, I learned that life is not a straight line.”
It’s not, but Cardona is figuring it out just fine.
Discover more from Fights Around The World
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
