AEW Women’s Locker Room Backstage Reaction to Thunder Rosa’s Injury

As noted before, Thunder Rosa recently suffered a back-related injury and was pulled from her scheduled match against Toni Storm for the AEW Women’s World Championship at AEW All Out 2022 event this past Sunday in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.

Dave Meltzer reported in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter that while Rosa’s injury is confirmed to be legit, many within AEW’s women’s locker room initially held a different view over the status of her injury. This view reportedly was due to Rosa had informed others of her injury only hours after she had been told by AEW officials that she would be dropping her title to Toni Storm at their All Out event. This reportedly led to many within AEW’s women’s locker room who already held negative views towards Rosa to dislike her event more due to the timing of her announcement and not wanting to drop the title before taking time off to recover.

Meltzer reported that there were many who also did not believe Rosa’s injury was as serious as they had been told with current AEW Interim Women’s Champion Toni Storm rumored to be one of those people.

Meltzer reported that Rosa herself has not been happy over her recent injury and the situation it caused for AEW, which she mentioned in a recent episode of her Athletes an the Arts podcast.

“Before I won my championship, I was hurt for the longest. One time, even Doc (Sampson) was like ‘You need to be taped if you’re going into the ring.’ I couldn’t feel my legs when I got out of the ring. But I have to get out there. I couldn’t let people down. So I wrestled with my hips taped for about two months, because I was wrestling all the time. So it was like, nonstop because of that drive that we have. I wanted to be the champion. I wanted to be the best. I wanted people to say that I did it, I wanted to say that I did it for myself.”

Meltzer also reported that Lucha Libre AAA head booker Konan was also upset over Rosa’s injury due to her initially telling him it was a knee injury and only finding out later that it was actually a back injury after he had pulled her off the card of AAA’s upcoming Triplemania XXX: Mexico City event. Konan stated in a recent episode of his Keepin It 100 podcast:

“I actually asked her. I said, ‘Yo, why would you tell me that it’s your knee when it’s your back?’ She said, ‘Oh, I thought I told you it was my back.’ I go, ‘No, you told me it was your f***king knee. Why would you say that?’ It’s either your knee or your back. There is no confusing it.’ That’s like me telling you, ‘Yea, I’m not going to show up because I have an eye infection’, and then I go, ‘No, what I really meant is my knee.’ The conspiracy guy in me felt like maybe, and I can be absolutely wrong, that maybe for having problems backstage, they sat her down and said, ‘Say you’re injured.’ But, she can also be injured.”

Transcript h/t: Wrestling Observer Newsletter