Kris Statlander Provides Timetable For AEW Return Following Injury

AEW star and "The Galaxy's Greatest Alien" Kris Statlander was on today's episode of The Wrestling Inc. Daily podcast where she and Wrestling Inc. Managing Editor Nick Hausman discussed her rehab from her ACL injury. Statlander tore her ACL on the June 10 episode of AEW Dynamite, and she revealed that while she is doing well, she may be out for another eight months.

"I'm doing pretty good. I think from what I've heard overall is that I might be a little bit ahead of others where I'm at right now, but I still have a real long way to go before I can re-debut basically and get back in the ring before I'm debuting again obviously, and I'm going to want to be training a little bit before," Statlander noted. "So I'll be able to get in the ring before you'll see me back on TV. It could be another eight months or so."

Hausman asked Statlander what it is like to deal with her injury not only during a pandemic but also with the injury coming as Statlander was positioned as one of the top stars of the AEW Women's Division.

"It's been more mentally challenging than physically challenging at times because physically, I have the ability to keep pushing myself and to just keep doing everything I need to, and I'll go harder than I probably should be to try and do my rehab and stuff like that, but mentally, you're sitting at home all day and you're alone all day because you can't go out and go do anything," Statlander explained. "You can only work out for so long in a day when you're injured and you just see all your friends, and everyone doing awesomely on TV and you're just like, 'man, I just want to be a part of that so bad, and I just feel like I'm useless to this division.' So there was a good two-three straight months where I cried every single night because I felt like I had just been failing everybody, and I don't even know what happened when I got injured.

"I just did a suicide dive, and the way I landed, I guess, was not perfectly right. You can actually see the dive on TV when I heard it, but all you see is me quickly grab my leg when I go down, and then the camera's off of me. But it doesn't even look like I did anything super insane, or it doesn't look very noticeable. 'Oh, she messed up her leg there.' You cannot tell at all. So I had no idea what happened. I just kind of felt a little 'pfft' in my leg. It didn't even hurt that bad either. I was just like, 'oh boy.'"

Statlander's star rose earlier this year when she took on Riho for the AEW Women's Championship. Statlander admitted that it takes her a while to have those big moments hit her, and she noted that she is the first person to wrestle for a WWE title and an AEW title.

"I feel like all these concepts don't hit me until after it's over because I'm just so focused on going out there and performing my best and trying to win and doing everything I can to get there," Statlander admitted. "It always takes me so long after the fact to realize what I've accomplished, and I feel like for someone that's been wrestling for about, I think four years, I've really done quite a lot.

"And I still sometimes refuse to acknowledge that because I'm just like, 'I don't know anything. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just trying to be out here having fun.' I was the first woman to win the Independent Wrestling TV Title. I had the first ever women's main event at my home promotion. I had a debut in Ring of Honor pretty early on. Someone made a comment one time that I was the first person to wrestle for both a WWE title and an AEW title because I did a squash match on SmackDown."

Statlander is currently a judge for "The Masked Wrestler", and Hausman asked if AEW signed off on this appearance. Statlander confirmed the appearance with AEW as long as the proper COVID-19 precautions were taken care of.

"As long as it was safe, they were okay with it," Statlander revealed. "We filmed it at the end of August, so it wasn't amidst the very beginning of everything happening, but I made sure I told the people that I needed to be this panelist. They asked me what the safety precautions were with everyone that were going to be involved and how many people could be in the building, and when filming it, it was very safe.

"People had masks on, not just the wrestlers. Everyone was pretty safely distanced out. The building had a bunch of windows, so there was ventilation, but it was just a very hot day. But they had their safety precautions, and we're doing temperature checks and everything."

Kris Statlander serves as one of three judges for the debut season of The Masked Wrestler. #MaskedWrestler streams every Wednesday night at 10/9c on IWTV.live. You can follow Kris on Twitter @callmekrisstat.

Kris' full interview aired as part of a recent episode of our podcast, The Wrestling Inc. Daily. Subscribe to get the latest episodes as soon as it's released Monday – Friday afternoon by clicking here.