All Elite Wrestling has been one extra-terrestrial short since mid-2020, when resident alien Kris Statlander was injured on the June 10th episode of Dynamite.
Statlander sustained a high grade ACL tear following a dive onto Kip Sabian, although in a recent interview with Fightful, she admitted to having not initially realised the severity of her injury:
I just did a suicide dive, and the way I landed, I guess, was not perfectly right. You can actually see the dive on TV when I heard it, but all you see is me quickly grab my leg when I go down, and then the camera’s off of me. But it doesn’t even look like I did anything super insane, or it doesn’t look very noticeable. ‘Oh, she messed up her leg there.’ You cannot tell at all. So I had no idea what happened. I just kind of felt a little ‘pfft’ in my leg. It didn’t even hurt that bad either. I was just like, ‘oh boy.
The tear required surgery to resolve, leaving Statlander with a lengthy spell on the sidelines and an extensive rehab programme.
However in positive news, during a recent Q&A with Pro Wrestling Junkies, the Galaxy’s Greatest Alien provided an update on her progress:
It’s going. It’s a very serious injury. I would say my knee is close to being healed, but it’s such an extensive and long recovery process to make sure I’m ready to go. Sometimes it takes people up to a year to get back, but it’s coming along for sure. I’m definitely pushing way harder than I need to be, but I do it because I know I’m going to come out stronger in the end.
Statlander’s progress was highlighted in a recent Instagram post where she performed a set of weighted squats, shifting 200lbs for two sets of five.
In the post, the former AEW Women’s Championship contender noted that performing this exercise had been her lone goal of 2020.
The news will come as a welcome boost to All Elite Wrestling as they continue to establish their Women’s Division.