During an appearance on Vickie Guerrero’s podcast, Ruby Riott talked about being out of action and her return:
“In May of 2019, I had to have shoulder surgery on my right shoulder. I had a labral tear. From what they described was from 12’o clock to 6’o clock which was quite a large tear. They put, I believe six anchors in my right shoulder, and then eight weeks later I had the same labral surgery done to my left shoulder. And there was, I believe, seven or eight anchors but into my left shoulder. I had double shoulder surgery, and that makes for quite some recovery and quite some time. This is actually the longest since I’ve started in 2010, this is the longest I’ve ever been away from professional wrestling ever. I’ve been okay with it, it’s been a little bit of a journey, it’s been a little bit of an adjustment, definitely, but I’m very much looking forward, I’m very motivated, I’m very motivated to come back. Especially with all the new and exciting things that are happening. The RAW premiere was last night, the season premiere, SmackDown on FOX. It’s just a lot of exciting things. NXT just premiered on USA. It’s a lot of exciting things for the company, and our division and things – so I’m looking forward to coming back, but it was definitely something that took me out for quite some time.”
“I’m just hoping the sooner the better, honestly. Like you said, it’s just been such a hard road. Physically, obviously, I lost a lot of muscle in my shoulder and my arms. I guess I didn’t realize how much I use my arms until I was without kind of one, and then both of them. But mentally it’s such a shift. When you’re so much – like you said, you’re so used to the adrenaline, and the go go go go go, and like I said I had a full-time job when I was on the independents, I was wrestling as much as I could, for quite some time, and I never really had the want or desire to stop because I loved it so much. I loved what I did. All of a sudden it’s just such a screeching halt. Suddenly – it was just such a mental difficulty like ‘I don’t know what to do with myself.’ I’ve been trying to find things to occupy my time as of recent. It’s been hard but I’m getting there.”
