During an appearance on The House of Hardcore Podcast, John Skyler recalled AEW paying him for time off during an injury despite not being under contract with the promotion.

“I did two or three matches. This was the third match. It was against Dark Order’s Stu Grayson and Evil Uno. It’s always the weirdest things that guys get hurt on. Up until that point, I wrestled for 12 years. I had over 1,200 matches. I’ve never had a serious injury. I blew out my knee doing a Ricky Morton forward roll underneath a clothesline. The bottom of my foot caught Uno in the quad, and it caused my knee to shoot out. It’s the damnedest thing trying to explain it.

“I tore my ACL, my MCL, and my PCL. It’s the same day that (Kris) Statlander blew out her knee, so we went and got our MRIs together at the same time. We got the news the next day. They projected that I was going to be out 8-9 months and she was going to be out for close to a year. I got my surgery done in South Carolina and I was back in 7 months. I have to credit everybody at AEW, Tony, and all the EVPs because not having a contact there, they could have sat me at home and said take care of it yourself and figure out what you’re going to do, but they brought me back every week to pay me. They also allowed me to do physical therapy with their medical team there at AEW. They did that for a full 7 months during a pandemic when they didn’t really have to. I’ll always be thankful for that. It was quite an experience, that 7 or 8 months that I did at AEW.”