Kris Statlander on Her AEW Women’s Title Reign, Women’s Blood & Guts Criticisms, Potential Future AEW All-Women’s Show, Working with Best Friends Being One of Her Favorite AEW Moments, Hardest Bump She’s Ever Taken, & More

Instinct Culture’s Denise Salcedo held a recent interview with AEW Women’s Champion Kris Statlander. One of the topics discussed included Statlander’s thoughts about her assessment of her current AEW Women’s title reign and if it had been everything she dreamed of.

“No, because you can’t ever predict how anything is going to go. I would never want to pretend or try and have this idea in my head of ‘this is exactly how it needs to be.’ The way that I won the title was kind of out of nowhere and it wasn’t an expected thing. I agree with that. It was a little bit of a shock to me as well. However, I’m doing everything that I can to exceed expectations and live up to the hype.”

Statlander also gave her thoughts about the online criticisms of AEW’s Women’s Blood & Guts match this past November and women bleeding during the match.

“First of all, women bleed once a month anyway. It’s kind of an unfair criticism. We don’t have a choice, really. To choose where we get to bleed from once is more power to the girlies. You don’t have to watch it if you don’t like it. It’s quite literally advertised as “blood and guts,” you should expect to see some tomfoolery, to say the least. As much as people might like seeing the guys do it, we are wrestlers, too. We have this sick desire to be disgusting and dangerous as well. This was the first one ever. We haven’t had the chance to let that rage out. Obviously, we’re going to go overboard and mutilate ourselves because we’re psychos and we all love to do that, and that’s why we are where we are. That’s why we’re in AEW, where the best wrestle and the best bleed.”

Statlander also gave her thoughts about the potential of AEW holding an all-women’s event in the future and if she believes that this event would happen.

“I think so. I think everyone is on board for getting to showcase their abilities. We don’t always have the time to showcase everything that we can do. More time to do what we love, there is nothing wrong with that. I love the idea of more girls getting to showcase their abilities. I feel like so many haven’t shown their full potential yet. I would love to be part of something like that, if that is something we were to do

In a separate recent interview with TMZ Sports, Statlander gave her thoughts about her time working with The Best Friends being her favorite time so far in her AEW career.

“If it was like based off of my experience, I think earlier on getting to work with Best Friends is probably one of my favorite experiences. It was just a very- we had a lot of fun and that was really like the best time. Yeah. Yes, I feel like it’s always kind of like I don’t know- when you get to a point and you’ve been around for a long time, you have a lot of times where you’re like, ‘oh, maybe they don’t need me anymore. Maybe the rest of the division has surpassed me’, especially when I’ve been around for quite some time. I’m like, ‘maybe I’m not keeping up’ or whatever. I don’t know. I go through a lot of ups and downs with where I stand today. So I like to look back on my happy, goofy times with my good friends, and I’m like, ‘oh, that was fun.'”

Statlander also gave her thoughts about the hardest bump she has taken in her wrestling career.

“I wouldn’t say it’s the bed of nails, which is probably what everybody’s thinking. There was one time on the independents, I took like a power bomb that was supposed to be onto the apron, but the person lost their balance and I kind of went headfirst onto the hardwood floor, and that one was very painful, and then I had to do like 15 more minutes of wrestling after that.”

Statlander also gave her thoughts about how she helped out AEW’s medical team in several ways while she was recovering from her knee injuries in 2020 and 2022.

“I was a jokingly part of the medical team. Because before I signed with AEW, I was a licensed massage therapist. When I was recovering from my knee surgeries, I would just like help them. I was bored and I was, it was during COVID and I would just go sit in the medical room the whole time, and I would just go like help them get tape or like bring ice packs and stuff to people, and then I would have to get in the ring and train a little bit in my process of coming back. Then, because I kind of understood like the protocol and I kind of helped put together a more structured return to play type thing, I feel like they kind of were relying on me a little bit to, help other people come back from injury. I’m not actually part of the medical team. I’m not licensed. Do not come to me for your medical advice. I will tell you to go to someone else.”

Statlander also gave her thoughts about how she helped with the logistics and preparation of Darby Allin’s flamethrower spot to Jack Perry due to her experience with fire stunt work prior to her pro wrestling career.

“So how it works, let’s say it’s your arm getting set on fire. You have towels that are soaked in like a fire resistant gel and you wrap your arm in that and then you layer it with like the fireproof suits that like a lot of race car drivers wear also soaked in the gel, and so it’s just a lot of really cold, sticky, gooey layering to protect you. Then you have to wear 100 percent cotton outfits because it doesn’t burn as fast. Then if you have long hair, you would wear this like hood thing that’s also soaked in the gel and then you cover your face and your hands with it. So it’s a really long process for like 30 seconds of looking cool.”

Statlander also gave her thoughts about a scary moment that happened to her during her AEW Women’s World Championship match against “Timeless” Toni Storm at this past October’s AEW WrestleDream 2025 event.

“Middle of the match…actually, it was towards the end. Toni (Storm), she puts me in her chicken wing submission, and, you know, it’s right after I beat her for the title. So she’s obviously trying to win it back, and I passed out for real in the middle of my match. But then I came back to you right away. It was weird. If you’ve never been, you know, choked out before. It kind of, it was like a weird, like almost like you’re falling asleep, but you’re kind of aware of everything, and then I like came back to you and everything was like kind of, slowly came back like a reverse fade to black basically and then I was like, all right, let’s go, I can’t I can’t be in here anymore.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, & 8