Martinez spoke candidly about his injury.
The newest episode of AEW Unrestricted spotlighted AEW/ROH referee Brandon Martinez. Martinez returned to his officiating duties at the 2025 Double or Nothing pay-per-view.
He had been sidelined because he suffered a torn labrum at ROH Final Battle 2024. He refereed two matches that night, despite suffering the injury in the first bout. He opted to go the physical therapy route instead of surgery. Martinez also opened up about the mental state he was in while he was out.
“It was. Hammerstein -- yep -- Ballroom… Well, I kind of knew right away. So, I was doing Mansoor versus Atlantis Jr., that match, and I went down for the first pinfall and immediately… my wrist slapped the mat. I just immediately, like, kind of bent over and I knew something’s not right. But, as I go to count for two, I get stuck up here so the timing is completely -- I kind of got scared, I kind of panicked and I was like, ‘Doc!’ And then midway, I was like, hold on, let me take a breather and I said just, ‘Never mind, Doc.’ I took a deep breath and right as they’re wrestling, I popped my shoulder back into place. Then I go for the second pinfall again and nearly forgetting what just happened, because I was just like, you know what? I popped it into place, I’ll be fine. Let’s just keep it going. So once I go down for the second pinfall, it pops again, it comes out of place again. At that point, I’m hot and I’m like, you know, hitting it and I pop it back into place and then it happens to me on the third time. The third time was weird. All I did was lift the winner’s hand. As soon as I pointed, it just completely… That’s how I knew it was really bad… I spoke to Doc and yeah, he told me, man, I should put some ice on it, see how I feel in a little bit. He honestly did not want me to go back out there, but I had one more match and I had a tag team match for the bullrope. It was Dustin (Rhodes) and Sammy Guevara. Guevara’s match and I really wanted to do it. I’ve never done a Bullrope match, so, I just managed to say screw it. Let’s tough it out and let’s go out there and finish. Because I don’t want to leave the team hanging here. There’s too much chaos. So, we got through it… After that match, everything started to sink in and I realized, like, damn, I’m really hurt, I’m really injured. I’m gonna have to take some time off. So I went to the doctor. They told me, ‘Popping it back into place three times probably wasn’t the smartest idea’ and they told me I’d have to either get surgery, be out six months to a year, or do physical therapy, and get a cortisone shot which I chose to do that so that way I could be back in four months. Through that time, it was kind of rough because I started to feel depressed, I started to miss everything that was happening. I started to drink like crazy. Man, I was in a bad space. A bad space. Aubrey (Edwards) was always there checking up on me, (Paul) Turner as well. I had the support system. I just wasn’t taking advantage of it. I had my family as well, I had my girlfriend as well but it was just, I was too caught up in my mind. I was too, like, in my own thoughts. After some time, I just, like, ‘I can’t do this any longer. I gotta get back to it, I gotta focus.’ I dug deep into my faith, I started training and everything started to fall into place after that.
From there, once I knew I could depend on the people that I have, that includes my team of refs, it just made everything so much easier for me to lock in and so it took three days out of the week of physical therapy, it took eating right. Really the hardest part was just getting my -- all the mental struggles I was having, getting all of that in order. From there, I was just so anxious to be back. I was texting Doc every day like, ‘Hey man, I think I’m good to go,’ and he was like, ‘Don’t rush the process. It’s better that you come back healed than to come back and get reinjured.’ So I was like, ‘You know what? You’re absolutely right’ so I just did my best to take my time and I finally got that text from Paul and I knew it was a wrap. Like, we’re back, let’s go.”
Martinez shared that the first match he officiated on the main card of an AEW pay-per-view was Forbidden Door 2024 when Mercedes Moné clashed with current WWE talent Stephanie Vaquer.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit AEW Unrestricted with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.
