Red Velvet made her return to competition on the November 8 episode of AEW Dynamite, facing Julia Hart in singles competition.
The match was Velvet's first in-ring action since the February 1 episode of AEW Dynamite when she lost to Jade Cargill in an AEW TBS Title bout.
Speaking to Elijah Burke on Pope's Point of View, Velvet went into detail regarding her injury.
"In June (2022), I suffered a hip injury after my match with Stat. I was gone from June all the way to November. We really couldn't figure out what it was. There was no surgery for that. I just ended up doing PRP, getting rehab on it, and I was fine. I was back in November, had a couple of matches, and then February 2023, I suffered a knee injury, not during my match with Jade, I think the issue was a little before that. I felt a change in my knee, possibly after my first match with Billie Starkz. We're wrestlers, so if something feels tweaked, you give it a couple of days, and nothing was crazy about it until my match with Jade when I did a simple Thesz press, and as soon as I got up, I just knew something in my knee was stuck. It was stuck, wasn't straightening, but the adrenaline was out of this world. I had just converted to wearing pants and I had two knee pads on top, my kickpads, and pants, which I think held my knee together. Had I been wearing shorts, I think my knee could have possibly exploded or tore fully. Nobody really knew, I tore my medial and lateral meniscus. I tore my meniscus in 2018, and I retore it this time when I did the Thesz press, it was apparently already torn because of the impact, the tear came out. I was getting stuff in my joint where the knee bends. There was no getting around that but having to go in, cutting it off, and all that. That put me on the shelf for nine months," she said.
Velvet said she wanted to have a positive mindset upon her return and didn't mind losing in her first match back because she had made it back to the ring.
Velvet last wrestled on the December 15 episode of AEW Rampage, losing to Anna Jay.
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