During a recent appearance on the “Going Ringside” podcast, The Hurt Syndicate lauded AEW President Tony Khan, with Shelton Benjamin noting how Khan offers opportunities to wrestlers that “the other place” likely wouldn’t.
MVP said, “Like I said, especially when we were coming to work and other people wouldn’t (during WWE’s COVID-era), you know, we were putting that work in and holding it down. To just get unceremoniously tossed to the side. Okay, we’re not doing that anymore. We’re doing this now. Well, wait a minute. So nah, it doesn’t feel good. But what does feel good is being able to reunite with the squad and going across the street and doing great numbers and doing good business and being able to continue what we started and shout out to Tony Khan. Thank you very much for giving The Hurt Syndicate that opportunity.”
Bobby Lashley added, “Tony’s fantastic.”
Shelton Benjamin continued, “I think Tony’s been great. I like to point this out: No matter what your opinion is, Tony has created a lane for people to be on TV, have gainful employment and make a name for themselves. So, I think first and foremost, I commend him for that because he’s, you know, given my career new life. He’s given guys who probably wouldn’t even get a sniff at the other place a chance to actually be stars so I think that alone makes Tony a real special guy. Tony’s been nothing but great to me and I think the other guys would say the same since we arrived.”
Ortiz sustained a torn pectoral muscle in January 2024 after delivering a clothesline during a match on Collision.
During a recent appearance on the “Johnny I Pro Show,” Ortiz revealed that he faced complications following his surgery.
A hematoma was discovered underneath his arm, and Ortiz required a second surgery. He finally returned to the ring in March, but he has yet to come back to AEW. Ortiz said,
“And honestly, I haven’t quit wrestling because of them (Eddie Kingston, Homicide & Low Ki), to be honest. During my injury, of course there’s that moment that you’re like, ‘What am I doing? I was kind of wasting away, I’m sitting there, I couldn’t move for like three to four months. I couldn’t do anything, and I actually never told this story before so, maybe three weeks after my surgery, ‘I think I can do legs.’ Like, let me do some leg presses or something like that. I’ll take it easy in the gym, and I don’t know if it was that or if it was something else, but then, I had a hematoma. So it was like a tennis ball that was under my arm. I’ll show you a picture later. It’s pretty gnarly. So, that happened like two or three weeks after the surgery and then I had to go in for a second surgery. So I was just, like, depressed. I went mostly my whole life with ever avoiding the hospital. Unreal that I made it 16-plus years without a serious injury and never had to stop wrestling. So when I had to get two surgeries within less than a month span, and then I was just like I can’t do anything for a couple of months. I have to just sit there and I was really contemplating, ‘Is this something I wanna continue doing?’ You know what I mean? And of course, you go through those questions, there’s self-doubt, I’m no longer in my tag team so, I definitely went to a low moment. That was a low moment for me. But then, speaking of mentors, Eddie Kingston told me this a long time ago and it always sticks with me, right? Everything is energy. You can control what you do with that energy. Yes, bad things and negative things are happening to you, but what are you gonna do? You’re gonna sit there and just kind of sulk about it and just let it affect you? Or are you gonna use that to make yourself work harder? To have that chip on your shoulder? And that’s where I’ve come at mentally. After having that low moment, I was like, okay, I’ve felt my feelings, I’m over it, but it’s time to man up. Let’s go. It’ll pass and now, honestly, if I didn’t go through that low moment, I don’t think I’d be mentally — and I’m in the best shape of my life right now… Only because now I’m just driven and I have a singular purpose and a singular goal. I wanna do so much volume, so much work that it is impossible that I don’t achieve the heights that I want. It’s impossible. So that’s just my only goal. Just keep doing volume, keep hammering it out, keeping my boots to the ground and just do it and my goal, now, ultimately is opening up the school because, really, honestly, that’s where I wanna transition into wrestling. I just wanna train people. I just wanna have bada*s students, to then go on the independents, and make names for themselves.”
And finally, during a recent interview with Denise Salcedo, ROH World Tag Team Champion Sammy Guevara evaluated his AEW career thus far.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On his AEW run: “So basically, my thing I was going to say, and then I lost it. Too many bumps and not enough food. We started so early in the morning. Anyway, it’s not what this is about. Yeah, I think my journey, I would call it as human. I would say Sammy Guevara in AEW is very human where I made a lot of mistakes in front of a lot of people’s eyes, but I also tried to learn from those things and get better.
On trying to live out his dream: “And I just feel like I’m just a person at the end of the day that had a dream as a kid that wanted to do this and trying to figure out and navigate all the things that come with that and you know, sometimes I handle it the best way and sometimes I don’t, but at the end of the day I do my best to try to learn from those mistakes.”
