In a recent interview with The Swerve City podcast, WWE RAW superstar Ruby Riott discussed her recent injury, as well as working hard to make an in-ring return.

“For everybody who doesn’t know, I had two torn labrums in both of my shoulders, I had to have seven anchors put into my right shoulder and eight anchors in my left and I had a bone chip removed from underneath. Apparently, according to my surgeon, I had both injuries for ten years, they were from when I started. I had originated the tear when I started and then, the ten years of wrestling happened and they just progressively got worse and worse and I had the first surgery and then six months later, I had the second surgery and then, I was out for a total of ten months, but that was the hard thing about the mental part of all of it, like shoulders were definitely a tough rehab.

I guess you could say it was my first real injury and it was something, because I had dealt with it for so long, I kind of had a choice as to when I went and got it taken care of. It’s something you can progress, it’s not like an immediate thing, like if you tear your ACL or whatever, like an immediate thing that you have to have fixed right away and something that you could know about, you just kind of have to pick the time, which because the time wasn’t chosen for me, the time was never right. I was like, oh I got this to do, this can wait, my shoulders can wait and I put it off to a point to where I could barely work out.

I noticed it the most in the gym when I tried to do any wide-grip bench press, like my shoulders would pop out and a lot of stuff in the ring, I worked around it for a number of years and it was a tough ten months. I was home alone a lot and mentally, I think I had to go down to like the deepest parts of me and mentally, I actually had to seek out and get some help and I’ve just recently become more open about this, because I think this is something, mental health is definitely something I feel like, because we don’t talk about it a lot, people think any kind of mental illness or disorder is wrong, or it’s bad, so I like to be open with it. I have adult ADHD, I have anxiety and I sometimes suffer from depression and kind of recognizing that and being like, okay, now this is what I have, what am I going to do.

I got to see a therapist and I was doing my rehab for my physical therapy, but I was doing my mental therapy as well. I came back and I felt better, I felt good about where I was and how I felt physically, mentally, emotionally, however you want to say it, but it was definitely something that I felt needed to happen in my career for me to get better in all aspects of my career.”

The full interview is available at this link.