Red Velvet Reveals She Was Out Of Action Due To Neck Issues & Dislocated Shoulder

Details about Velvet’s absence from in-ring competition.

Red Velvet returned to in-ring action on the three-hour Dynamite/Collision special on November 19th. Velvet went into the match as the ROH Women’s World Television Champion and clashed with the Interim ROH Women’s World Television Champion Mercedes Moné. Moné emerged victorious to become the Undisputed Champion.

Before that bout, Velvet had not wrestled since June 2025. Several days after the match against Mercedes, Velvet appeared on Busted Open and spoke about the injuries that sidelined her. She got hurt at the AEW/ROH x CMLL shows in June. She said there were neck issues, and she had a dislocated shoulder.

“It’s just been a journey so, I was rocking and rolling in my reign. Having a good reign and then we went to Mexico and unfortunately, I got hurt in Mexico. I completed the tour and everything. It wasn’t until I got back that I started feeling weird and we went to get MRIs and figured out I had some things with my neck (and) my shoulder was dislocated so, that began the healing journey that kind of came out of nowhere, and it was the first time I’m getting injured in AEW as a champion, so that was another thing to deal with, and recovery went great. As soon as it happened, I just said to myself, especially after coming back from such a big knee injury that I was gone close to a year, this time around, knowing I wasn’t gonna be gone that long, I was like, ‘Okay, the injury happened. Let’s put it behind. Straight into healing and comeback, because once you come back, you’re still a champion so it’s not like come back, see where you pop up. It’s gonna be like off to the races’ so, I just focused on that. Every time any injury happens, that’s also a signal to me that it’s not just a physical thing, it’s a mental thing in the body so, I took that time to center myself. But, throughout the injury — I watch AEW every week. If I’m home, I watch it. If I’m there, I watch it. I watch it all the time so I never feel away, even though I’m away. I’m always aware and seeing what’s going on…”

Velvet dove into her comeback and sharing the ring with Mercedes Moné. She said she’s always looked up to her, and Mercedes is one of her idols.

“I’ve looked up to Mercedes Moné since the beginning of her career because she started — and she was 90 pounds. Tiny, just like I was and that was such a big inspiration to see her do such beautiful, amazing things and pivotal things for the women’s division and just revolutionary for the women. That was very inspiring and I watched her entire career so I’d be lying if I said, oh, I don’t care. Of course I care. You get to be face-to-face with one of your idols. You only hope that in your time of wrestling, your paths cross because sometimes your idols retire, or when you watched them, they were so much older and they’re not in the business anymore so that to me was, like, a big gift that the universe gave me. At the same time, I manifested that a year ago. I called her out a year ago (at) the Final Battle scrum. So I knew it was only a matter of time…”

Velvet and Moné are scheduled to run it back for the ROH Women’s World Television Title at the Final Battle pay-per-view on December 5th.

If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Busted Open with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.