During a recent appearance on the “WrestleBinge” podcast, Orange Cassidy addressed AEW’s critics and shared his thoughts on how he would respond to their negativity.
Cassidy said, “I could say, ‘Why do you care?’ I could say, if you want AEW to fail, then fine. I don’t know why you have to go on and say it out loud. We are a very young company. We’ve been around for five years. We’ve just grown exponentially fast and gained traction very early, thanks to Tony Khan. We’re gonna have to go through adjustments. This isn’t gonna be a thing that’s an only now problem. We’re gonna have problems throughout our entire tenure. This is just the way it is. I always feel that the powers that be at AEW are trying to do their best to bring the best product, and if that means we gotta go somewhere else, we’re gonna go somewhere else. This is just part of it. I really hope AEW doesn’t go anywhere because if people really want AEW to fail and not succeed, it’s best when there’s competition, and you’d like to think that maybe something is going on in their lives, and maybe they’re going through some stuff, and they get angry, and they gotta vent. Whatever. I just don’t read it.”
During a recent appearance on the “AEW Unrestricted” podcast, Thunder Rosa discussed her recovery from the back injury she sustained in 2022 and reflected on her mental state.
After a year away, Rosa mentioned receiving negative messages from individuals during her time off.
She said, “That was probably the worst year of my life, period, especially physically, mentally. Just imagine, you can run, you can jump, and they just cut your legs, you can’t do that. Had to learn how to walk, had to learn how to run again, had to learn how to do a bunch of stuff again. I’m going to the extreme, but this is how it feels, when they take something that you identify yourself with for so long, and they just take it away, and they’re like, ‘No, you can’t have it, you gotta to earn it again.’ So it was very rough, and it was very mentally rough. I spoke about this very openly, I had suicidal thoughts for a long time because with all the layers I had, not only the injury, it was like, I don’t feel like, certain people didn’t give me the chance, and some of the fans just turned on me, and the comments they were making, they were awful, awful. Like, ‘Go kill yourself. You don’t want to put the people over.’ It hurt so bad that at times, I couldn’t deal with it. I just couldn’t. I wanted to defend this title, I wanted to give my best, but I physically couldn’t do it. It just ate me. But I utilized the resources, I got physically stronger, I stopped having pain, which allowed me to exercise, which allowed me to get back in the ring, so little by little, I started gaining my confidence back, and I think that was the one thing, I allowed people to take my confidence away from me. So this injury really broke my spirit, and everything that came with the injury, but I fought through it, I have a very strong team that was with me. They were there for me, and a lot of my very close friends, they helped me tremendously. At the time, I had a really good therapist who helped me with a lot of the issues that I was dealing with because it wasn’t only, ‘I want to get back.’ It was all this ideas and things. They broke how Thunder Rosa was. I had control of everything, and everything just fell apart, and I had control of nothing. So I had to let it roll and let it happen. When I was [doing] commentary, there was times I was having panic attacks because it was just so hard that I couldn’t be in the ring. It was hard, but I endured. I was like, ‘F*ck it, I’m gonna come stronger and nothing is gonna faze me anymore.’ Commentary helped me so much to really see professional wrestling in a different way, and also broadcasting, that gave me the strength and a voice. Ever since then, it’s just been. I enjoy, and I am blessed every time I step in the ring because I never know when this is gonna be taken away. It’s a blessing.“
