Kris Statlander On Why Recent AEW Return Was “Very, Very Different”

Kris Statlander is hoping this most recent return of hers will be better than how things went for her in the past.

Statlander’s time in AEW has yielded mixed results. She was initially introduced as some sort of alien character with unusual mannerisms but that gimmick didn’t lead to anything fruitful.

Unfortunately, whatever progress she had made during that first run came to an end in June 2020 when she suffered an ACL injury that sidelined her for almost a full year.

Statlander returned to in-ring action at the end of March 2021, but she still didn’t achieve much in the ring. Then in August 2022 she suffered a second major ACL injury that sidelined her once again, this time for an indefinite amount of time.

Kris Statlander appears to be in much better condition now, as shown with AEW’s willingness to book her to win a championship. Speaking on Busted Open Radio, she explained how she’s hoping this time things will go differently yet she’s also struggling with nerves in being back and in dealing with having already suffered two major injuries.

“I was hoping that I wouldn’t mess up. It’s not the first time that I’ve made a return, because this is my second ACL injury.

But it was very, very different from the first one, because the first time there were no fans, and I was sitting in a claw machine for the entirety of a match, waiting to pop out of it.

So it was a lot different of a situation, coming out on pay-per-view to ten thousand people … It was more just trying to remind myself that ‘I know what I’m doing, you’ve done this before.'”

I remember Trent told me that I was playing it very cool, but I have the heart rate monitor that I had on, and it said I was in the high-stress zone for about an hour, just how fast my heart was beating.

But he was like ‘You were playing it so cool, I had no idea.’ And I said ‘Well, you know, I like to show that I’m not nervous.’ Can’t let them know, can’t let these people know I’m scared.”

h/t WrestlingInc for the transcription