Former AEW Women’s World Champion Thunder Rosa (age 36) last wrestled in August 2022. She has been out of action with a major back injury.
She recently returned to AEW TV on an episode of Dynamite, but hasn’t returned to the ring yet.
During an interview on Busted Open Radio, Rosa talked about her struggles with this injury and how she had suicidal thoughts.
Below is what she said:
“It’s a process, you have no control over it. When it comes with health, you have no control over it. For so many nights, I really kicked myself in the head and I was like, I should’ve just had one more match and just let it all out.
If I got hurt more, whatever. But it was that one time and when I decided to do something because of my health and I decided to make that decision and I didn’t know what the consequences were gonna be and how people were gonna react.
I was just thinking about my own physical health and at the time everything was happening, I was not in a good mental state too. I was trying to hide a lot of stuff because I was having some personal issues and being on top just exacerbates everything else that is happening in your life so I just feel like no matter what you do, you are always being criticized and you are always — nothing is good enough.
You’re always doing something wrong and I feel like you put a loop over it and it’s just like it magnifies everything and being under that kind of pressure was very difficult and not having the time to just really let it go, because sometimes when people get injured, they take some time off and people are cool and they’re not saying anything, they’re not feeling attacked but I feel like when that happened, not only knowing I would have to relinquish something that I worked really hard for, it was hard enough but adding all the other levels of things on social media, the constant asking, ‘What’s going on?’ Like if you’re really injured or not, that really hurt even more.
It made things much more difficult than they were mentally for me. There were days that I — I’m gonna be honest and I’ve said it on my YouTube channel, I wanted to k*ll myself.
Everything stopped and there’s nothing you can do and I’m so thankful that I have a really good team and a really good family. My son, I think he’s the one who’s helped me the most and he helped me many times many nights, just telling me everything’s gonna be okay and I was lucky enough to have some resources and I was able to be in therapy.
There were not good sessions at times. There was a lot of crying, there’s a lot of letting things go and accepting things that you cannot change and you’re just moving forward.”
