In just a few weeks, Thunder Rosa will reach the one year anniversary of her return to the ring, following a sixteen month hiatus as the former AEW Women's World Champion attempted to recover from a serious back injury. Rosa has made no secret that the road to recovery was rough from her. But during her recent appearance on "AEW Unrestricted," she revealed just how dark things got for her during that time.
"That was probably the worst year of my life, period," Rosa said. "Especially physically and mentally. Just imagine, like, you can run, you can jump, and they just cut your legs, you can't do that. You...just have to learn how to walk, how to learn how to run again, how to learn how to do a bunch of stuff again. I mean, I'm going to the extreme, but this is how it feels. They take something you identify yourself with for so long, and they just take it away. And they're like 'Nah, you can't have it. You've got to earn it again.'So it was very rough, and it was very mentally rough."
Rosa admitted that she was in such a bad state mentally during that time that she had suicidal thoughts. A big part of what hurt her mental health was the vitriol she received from some fans, who didn't believe the seriousness of her injuries.
"Some of the fans turned on me," Rosa said. "They were just being like...the comments they were making were awful. Awful, like 'Go and kill yourself. You don't want to put people over.' It's like 'What?' It hurt so bad that at times, I couldn't deal with it...I wanted to defend this title. I wanted to give my best. But I physically couldn't do it. And it just ate me."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "AEW Unrestricted" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription
