Former ROH Women’s World Television Champion Red Velvet spent a significant portion of 2025 out of the ring due to neck and shoulder injuries, she revealed in a recent interview.
34-year-old Red Velvet, who made her return to the ring just a few weeks back after nearly five months on the sidelines, told Busted Open Radio (H/T Fightful) last month that she suffered an injury during AEW’s trip to Arena Mexico back in June.
“I was rocking and rolling in my reign, you know, having a good reign, then we went to Mexico and unfortunately, I got hurt in Mexico,” Red Velvet said. “I completed the tour and everything. It wasn’t until I got back [home] that I started feeling weird and we went to get MRIs and figured out I had some things with my neck and my shoulder was dislocated.”
ROH established an interim women’s TV title during Red Velvet’s time away, a belt first earned by Mina Shirakawa but later grabbed by Mercedes Moné. Knowing that she would return as a champion helped motivate Red Velvet during her time away, she said.
“Recovery went great. As soon as it happened I just said to myself, especially after coming back from such a big knee injury that I was gone close to a year, this time around knowing I wasn’t going to be gone that long I was like ‘Okay, the injury happened, let’s put it behind, like straight into healing and come back, because once you come back you’re still a champion. It’s not going to be like come back and see where you pop up, it’s going to be like, off to the races.'”
Red Velvet lost a title unification bout to Moné last month on an episode of AEW Collision. She’ll have a chance to try and regain the belt on Friday when they meet for the title as part of ROH’s Final Battle card.
