Luchasaurus has opened up about the severe medical issues that sidelined him from AEW for close to a year, revealing that a serious case of pneumonia left him bedridden on oxygen and fearing the worst as the illness spread through both of his lungs.

Speaking with Chris Jericho on Talk Is Jericho, the former AEW star shared how what initially seemed like a lingering cold quickly escalated into a frightening health scare that nearly became life-threatening.

“We had no road to wrap it up because, creatively, everyone wanted something different, and I ended up getting sick. I got pneumonia, which took me into a situation where I was in bed with oxygen for a month. It got to the point where I was about to go out the door for Grand Slam. I was about to hop on the plane, and I had this cold that wouldn’t go away. Something inside of me was like, ‘I can’t get on that plane. I feel weird.’ I texted Doc and he told me to stay home. They covered for me creatively that week. They gave me antibiotics, but it wasn’t getting better. All of a sudden, I felt really bad one day. We thought it was maybe a pulmonary embolism. It was scary to think that,” Luchasaurus explained.

The situation became even more alarming once doctors discovered how far the illness had progressed.

“They were like, ‘You actually have pneumonia, but it’s spread to both lungs. We can give you these meds and just pray.’ I started learning about how fragile your lungs are. Brodie Lee started with something similar to what I had, I’m not sure of all the details, but I do know that he ended up going on the ventilator, and that’s what you don’t want to have happen. If you panic on the ventilator, you blow your lungs, and everything is done. I never got to the ventilator. They just needed oxygen to get my oxygen back up and for the antibiotics to work. I was cleared within three months of it, but creatively, me and Jack Perry found ourselves both at home for eight more months even though we were both healthy,” he said.

At the time of his illness in September 2024, Luchasaurus was involved in an ongoing storyline with Christian Cage under the Killswitch persona. He eventually returned to AEW programming in August 2025, initially continuing as Killswitch before later reuniting with Jack Perry and returning to the Luchasaurus name the following month.