Wardlow Confirms He’s Recovering From Torn Pec Injury: “We’re Very, Very Close To Being Ready”
An update directly from Wardlow.
After having been off AEW television since March 2024, Wardlow returned to the company at the AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door pay-per-view in August 2025.
Several weeks later, Fightful Select pushed out a report that Wardlow may have possibly suffered a torn pectoral muscle. The three-time TNT Champion confirmed that during an interview with BCP+.
He was asked to send a message to the fans who miss him, and he apologized for going ghost on social media. He said he’s very, very close to coming back. He then went on to speak in-depth about his injury history and the car accident he was involved in in April 2024. Wardlow did not go to a hospital after that; instead, he got on a plane to an AEW event.
While being evaluated by AEW doctors, it was discovered that his hip was out of place, and they popped it back in. Wardlow said he planned to continue wrestling, but his storyline was scrapped again, so he decided to go home.
“I miss him too. I miss Wardlow so bad. Like I said, it’s been over two years since I’ve wrestled. So, it has been a rough two years. Basically everything I have loved and cared about was taken away from me almost all at once. From my friend to my dog to wrestling to the ability to work out. I mean, everything I loved was taken from me, and I miss wrestling so much, I can’t even put it into words, and I do wanna apologize to the fans for my absence, and for completely going ghost on social media. Because I just kind of hid under a rock for a while… So I apologize to the fans. I will never be absent again, and I am so excited to get back to wrestling in front of a live crowd and at this point, I don’t care if they’re cheering me, I don’t care if they’re booing me. I just want to feel that energy. Positive or negative. I just wanna feel that energy and get back to doing what I love, and we’re very, very close to being ready… Obviously, I’m healing up from the torn pec, which most people know about. I also wanna state, because there’s a lot of discourse online about this, about injuries, right? This torn pec is the first injury in my entire life, indies included, that I’ve ever taken time off for wrestling. Any time you saw me absent before the car accident, any time you saw me absent was never because of an injury. It was creative or there just wasn’t anything going on at the time and I was sitting at home. Did I tweak my knee? Yes, and I continued wrestling. Did I tweak my hamstring? Yes. I continued wrestling. Then I got into that car accident, and I’m so dumb I would have continued to wrestle. Most people after that car accident would have been in a hospital bed. I didn’t even go to the hospital. I got in my car, went to the airport, and I flew across the country for work, and I had to stand in the bathroom most of the flight because it hurt so bad to sit down. When I got to work, I had our doctors take a look at me and my hip was actually popped out of place, and I flew there with my hip out of place which is why it hurt so bad to sit down, and they popped my hip right back into place right there, which I don’t think I’ve ever made the noise I made when that happened. I have a pretty high pain tolerance. Boy, did that hurt. So it was the car accident that really messed me up, and I was gonna continue to work, which maybe wouldn’t have been smart but I was gonna continue to work, and then the storyline that was planned got thrown in the garbage for like the second or third time, and that’s when I ultimately decided, okay, I’m gonna go home. The storyline that I was looking forward to for the second time got canned. I can barely walk at this point after the car accident. So I finally decided to take some time off, which was the first time ever in my career, and then it was while I was healing from that, (American) Gladiators came about. So, thank you to AEW and thank you to Tony Khan for giving me the blessing to go do Gladiators, and then yes, obviously a bummer. I come back immediately, tear my pec. But, we are most definitely going to come back the biggest, baddest version of Wardlow that anybody’s ever seen.”
When Wardlow returned at Forbidden Door, he targeted Swerve Strickland and proceeded to align himself with The Don Callis Family.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit BCP+ with an H/T to Fightful for the transcription.
