Samuray Del Sol looks back on his one and only AEW appearance.
The former WWE cruiserweight champion spoke on this topic during a recent appearance on The Sessions, where he revealed that he was facing some serious health issues prior to wrestling for Tony Khan’s company back in 2021. Del Sol shared the story and opened up about how scary that time was since he felt like he was near death.
Once I got out of the hospital, three weeks later, I’m having dinner with my wife, my phone rings, it’s Tony Khan. We talked and he offered me a match with FTR. I’m excited, I’m not even thinking of me being sick and I hung up. I looked at my wife like, ‘What the hell did I just do? I just got out of the hospital.’ Like oh my God. So everything’s running through my mind, everything’s just hitting me. I went to the bathroom and literally started balling, like man, can I do this? You know what? I’m gonna roll the dice on this. I’m like, ‘Babe, you need to support me in this.’ She was kind of mad at me. It’s like, ‘No. Your heart. You need to stop. Isn’t this a sign?’ ‘No. This is a sign too’ because my very first major injury back in 2011, I messed up my head really bad and I had the same scenario. Seriously, I had a (bad injury) and I’m like, ‘Woah, WWE called me for a tryout. Let’s keep going.’ So, I had to tell FTR. I worked with them for a long time. They took care of me. That’s why they’re the best. They’re the best and that’s why I’m forever grateful for them because I told them, ‘If I have a heart attack or anything, just roll me underneath the ring.’ I didn’t even tell anybody about this but that’s why I felt so emotional and I had to pray for my friend, I called him (Luke) Harper. The day before the Day of the Dead, Día de los Muertos. So it’s a tradition, we pray. We always pray to our loved ones, our friends. Me, when I first went up on the road and many people don’t know, we bonded. He kind of helped me mentally too like, ‘Hey man, it’s gonna be cool. It is your first tour in WWE.’ The boys will know the boys, you know? And I had that cool, strong connection with him like, ‘Hey Dragongate buddy. Hey Dragongate’ because we were in Dragongate. So it kind of hit me there because us Latinos, we pray a lot and it kind of felt right for the first time like, you know what?… I felt his presence. To me, it was like, man, when you helped me the first time I got on the road in WWE, like mentally, I kind of felt the same there because I didn’t feel scared… I’m like, man, I’m gonna have a heart attack in that ring (he laughed). But no, everything went well, FTR took care of me. I was surprised. At the end of that match, I just started balling. Oh my God. I went to my room, I didn’t even think. I had to do an emotional tweet man.
On that night Del Sol teamed up with Aero Star to challenge FTR for the AAA tag team titles, a match the lucha-libres would lose. Afterward, he tweeted out how much he loved Jon Huber (Brodie Lee), who he says looked after him during their time together in WWE. He also says that he had to bring a breathing machine with him to AEW due to his condition.
I knew him (Jon Huber) and he kind of helped me out and I’m like, wow, that’s cool and I kind of felt it had the same feeling when I went there (AEW) too and I’m like, that’s why I had to do that prayer and I just didn’t know it was gonna affect so much people the wrong way or it was just heartbreaking to me… I misspelled his name… I wasn’t even thinking. I was just really crying when I was tweeting (he laughed). I’m like, man, I’m alive. I went asleep, then I woke up, I saw what was happening and it’s just like, ah. Man, I just felt sad. I was just emotional, I was crying. I was just grateful I was alive but again, nobody knows the other side of my story that I literally almost died and three weeks later, I’m wrestling in AEW (for my) debut and had to tell FTR, ‘My lungs are burning.’ I was spitting out blood still. I was still on oxygen machines back at home and I was actually gonna bring my oxygen machine. That was the only request. I was trying to see, ‘I have a machine I might bring just to help me breathe’ but I didn’t really tell them why, and it was requested that I had to carry my oxygen machine because I couldn’t breathe and actually, I couldn’t even walk as much too but I had coffee, what else? Pre-workout, whatever it took for me to get that energy and a couple Advil and C.B.D. just for me to go through the match because I was nervous that I was gonna have a heart attack in the ring.
Unfortunately, Del Sol spelled Jon Huber’s name wrong in the tweet, an accident that pissed off Amanda Huber, Chris Jericho, and a number of other names close to Jon. He tells Paquette that he didn’t receive too many bookings after that and fell into some depression.
For a while, I did feel like the door did close for me to get bookings after that (the tweet he sent out after AEW debut). I did kind of went into depression for a bit… I don’t know (if it was because of the tweet). I couldn’t get work. Some people thought it was for clout and I just always say, the boys know the boys. It’s okay. The kids are not there, the families are not there, the wives, the husbands are not there, whatever, you know? I just felt heartbroken and I’m like, you know what? I just pushed it aside, let’s keep going no matter what because I didn’t let that stop me after my depression because I had to reevaluate my life, reevaluate my thoughts, my mind, everything that I’d been through, that I worked for, I felt that it was taken away. But, again, lucha (he laughed).
Del Sol recently made his debut for DDT-Pro in Japan.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)