Wardlow Confirms He’s Still Recovery from Torn Pec Injury and Being “Very, Very Close To Being Ready” & He Worked with a Fully Torn Bicep Injury for Filming of American Gladiators Reboot

BCP+ held a recent interview with Wardlow. One of the topics discussed included Wardlow’s thoughts about his current lengthy abscense from AEW and confirmed that he is recovering from a torn pectoral injury but he is “very, very close to being ready” to make a return from his injury.

Wardlow also gave his thoughts about the rough past two years he has had in regards to his injury history and him being involved in a car accident in April of 2024.

“I miss him too. I miss Wardlow so bad. Like I said, it’s been over two years since I’ve wrestled. So, it has been a rough two years. Basically everything I have loved and cared about was taken away from me almost all at once. From my friend to my dog to wrestling to the ability to work out. I mean, everything I loved was taken from me, and I miss wrestling so much, I can’t even put it into words, and I do wanna apologize to the fans for my absence, and for completely going ghost on social media. Because I just kind of hid under a rock for a while… So I apologize to the fans. I will never be absent again, and I am so excited to get back to wrestling in front of a live crowd and at this point, I don’t care if they’re cheering me, I don’t care if they’re booing me. I just want to feel that energy. Positive or negative. I just wanna feel that energy and get back to doing what I love, and we’re very, very close to being ready… Obviously, I’m healing up from the torn pec, which most people know about. I also wanna state, because there’s a lot of discourse online about this, about injuries, right? This torn pec is the first injury in my entire life, indies included, that I’ve ever taken time off for wrestling. Any time you saw me absent before the car accident, any time you saw me absent was never because of an injury. It was creative or there just wasn’t anything going on at the time and I was sitting at home. Did I tweak my knee? Yes, and I continued wrestling. Did I tweak my hamstring? Yes. I continued wrestling. Then I got into that car accident, and I’m so dumb I would have continued to wrestle. Most people after that car accident would have been in a hospital bed. I didn’t even go to the hospital. I got in my car, went to the airport, and I flew across the country for work, and I had to stand in the bathroom most of the flight because it hurt so bad to sit down. When I got to work, I had our doctors take a look at me and my hip was actually popped out of place, and I flew there with my hip out of place which is why it hurt so bad to sit down, and they popped my hip right back into place right there, which I don’t think I’ve ever made the noise I made when that happened. I have a pretty high pain tolerance. Boy, did that hurt. So it was the car accident that really messed me up, and I was gonna continue to work, which maybe wouldn’t have been smart but I was gonna continue to work, and then the storyline that was planned got thrown in the garbage for like the second or third time, and that’s when I ultimately decided, okay, I’m gonna go home. The storyline that I was looking forward to for the second time got canned. I can barely walk at this point after the car accident. So I finally decided to take some time off, which was the first time ever in my career, and then it was while I was healing from that, (American) Gladiators came about. So, thank you to AEW and thank you to Tony Khan for giving me the blessing to go do Gladiators, and then yes, obviously a bummer. I come back immediately, tear my pec. But, we are most definitely going to come back the biggest, baddest version of Wardlow that anybody’s ever seen.”

Wardlow also gave his thoughts about the process that led to him joining the cast of the new American Gladiators reboot series.

“Oh man, it was quite a fun process. Bit of a rollercoaster. Nothing in the past couple years of my life hasn’t come with some controversy and some — a little bit of roadblocks here and there, and this was no different. So the opportunity came about. They were looking for somebody like myself. They saw me, they said, ‘Let’s see what this guy’s about,’ so we do a couple Zoom calls, just like this. Just talking about myself, and I, at one point, I’m standing right here ripping my shirt off, screaming and flexing. Doing the whole little audition type thing just to show ‘em what I’m all about, and they immediately loved me, and wanted to take the next step. So we had to go out to L.A. to do a combine. There were many of these with large groups of athletes… For the most part, very confident in myself and my abilities, okay? So this came about after being away from wrestling for a while. So I had a car accident that took me out of wrestling for a while. So I had been rehabbing that, and I had just really started to start training again at this point. So I went to this combine, just starting training again. So, as confident as I am, I was a little bit skeptical, like, okay, I could have used a few more months of rehab and stuff but, we’re gonna go for it, and the elevator door opens and we’re all sitting there and I’m scoping out the competition and I’m like, yeah, I got this. There’s not one guy here that I’m worried about, and then the elevator door opens and out walks Eric Boogs. Not only is it him but, lo and behold, he is decked out head to toe in 90s American flag, singlet, just the whole nine, and I’m like, well, as confident as I am, if it’s me versus this guy, I’m gonna have a run for my money here. So, of course we ended up getting paired up together for this combine. They basically paired you up with the person you’re closest to in age and size and we were the two biggest guys there, and we were curious the whole time. We were like, ‘Do you think they just wanna see us? Or is it like me versus you right now?’ So, we ended up building a little bit of a relationship through the course of this day… we’re questioning whether they were trying to choose between the two of us, or we were just basically being put on display. But we had to do this physical challenge. Push-ups, pull-ups, rope climb, tire flip, wrestling, and gosh, not to put the guy over too much, but, I will say I’ve been on the mat with a lot of guys; wrestling, jiu-jitsu. I’ve never felt overpowered, even remotely. I’m pretty strong fella. First time in my life I’ve ever felt somebody match my strength, and I will say, Boogs is the real deal, and he is a collegiate Division I wrestler, which I never was. So he should be very skillful. But, we were neck and neck the whole time and we had a fun day and then that was it, and part of me was like, ah, I don’t think I got it. If it’s coming down to me and Boogs, he’s so charismatic, so over the top. I was like, ‘Yeah, if they have to choose, they’re probably gonna go with him,’ and I was at dinner with my sister for her birthday, and it was just her and I having a nice little sit-down dinner… Time had passed. I didn’t even really think about it at this point, and I get a phone call from my agent, and he goes, ‘Hey, you’re an American Gladiator,’ and it was just like, ‘Well, I guess we’re gonna get a glass of wine and celebrate right now because I’m officially an American Gladiator.’ So, that was a very long way of telling you how I got the role.”

Wardlow also gave his thoughts about how he worked the filming with a fully torn left bicep injury.

“Right before — and this goes back to what I said — there’s always some controversy, there’s always some sort of hill I have to climb. The past couple of years, it’s just been the theme. Right before flying out, like days before flying out to film this show, I fully tore my left bicep. So, and I did it training for — the mistake I always make, I overtrain, always. When there’s something big, I just go balls to the wall and I destroyed my body a little too much in preparation for the show, because you would have thought I was going into the Olympics. That’s how I was training, and so I trained all night long and I made the mistake of waking up the next morning and getting right back to training on the rings. I don’t know if you remember where you swing across the rings and you gotta wrap your legs around ‘em, so I was training for that a lot because I’m a wizard on the monkey bars so, I’m like, ‘I really wanna do this event.’ So dude, I was training all morning, swinging, swinging and then my last round — it’s always the last one. Don’t ever say, ‘Alright, one more.’ Because that’s when it happens, and I went to swing to the next ring and just felt it pop, and I fell to the ground and I just knew right away. I was just like, ‘I just tore my bicep,’ and I’ve never torn a muscle. I’ve never torn a muscle. So I went to my surgeon, and he said, ‘We can either fix this — it’d be super easy and you’d be out six months.’ He’s like, ‘I know you really wanna go do the show.’ He’s like, ‘If you can deal with the pain, and you can accept the fact you’re gonna lose 10 to 15 percent strength, and it’s gonna be wildly uncomfortable, but if you wanna go, go,’ and I was like, ‘That’s all I needed to hear.’ So, the first few days we were just training. So I wore a long-sleeve shirt, because my whole arm was black and blue. So I just wore a long-sleeve shirt and hid it from everybody, and just kind of bit the bullet and did what I could. Obviously, there were some events I couldn’t do, which was a total bummer. I couldn’t do some things and I just said, ‘Oh, yeah, my shoulder’s a little messed up. I can’t do that.’ So I went into this very defeated. I flew in, like, I don’t know if I should be here. It was rough, and then (Eric) Boogs and Steel (Jessie Godderz)… The Bull (Boogs) and Steel, other wrestlers — The Bull came in with a little tweak. Steel tweaked a little something during training, and talking to The Bull about this because we came in kind of not liking each other. It’s just that big man heat, where it’s like we’re so similar, we have to hate each other. Until we have an actual conversation and realize we’re brothers. We’re literally the same person. It was exactly one of those moments, where I ended up telling him what I was dealing with. He told me what he was dealing with, and we’re like, ‘You know what? We’re both hurting. We’re gonna be each other’s support system and we’re gonna get through this together, and we’re gonna just gas each other up.’ Well, I see Steel after doing the rock climbing training. He’s sitting by himself with his head down, and I’m like, oh, that’s me. That’s me. Something’s off. So I went up to him, I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ And he’s like, ‘Man, I just found a little pop in my arm.’ He’s like, ‘I don’t know. This is rough,’ and I was like, ‘Do not tell anybody this,’ and I lifted my sleeve up and I showed him the purple and yellow and he’s like, ‘Dude, what is that?’ I was like, ‘I just fully tore my bicep.’ I’m like, ‘I didn’t tell anybody.’ I’m like, ‘Whatever you got going on, even if you tore something, you can get through this,’ and dude, his whole attitude changed, and next thing you know, the three of us, brothers forever. I talk to those guys almost every day of my life and I don’t think to (talk to) anybody every day of my life. Even my mother which she would probably have some things to say about that. We ended up being each other’s support system over the course of this month and we really helped each other get through it…”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1 & 2