Ortiz reveals he needed second surgery after January 2024 torn pec repair

In a recent interview, Ortiz revealed that he needed a second surgery after undergoing a procedure to repair a torn pec in January 2024.

Ortiz suffered the injury throwing a clothesline in a match on the January 20, 2024, episode of AEW Collision. He hasn’t been back in the promotion since. During a recent appearance on the Johnny I Pro Show, he addressed what led to him needing a second surgery.

“I actually never told this story before, so maybe three weeks after my surgery I’m like, ‘I think I could do legs, let me do some leg press or something like that, I’ll take it easy in the gym.’ And I don’t know if it was that or something else but then I had a hematoma, so it was like a tennis ball that was under my arm.“

“That happened, like, two or three weeks after the surgery, and then I had to go in for a second surgery. So I was just like depressed.”

Ortiz returned to the ring in March 2025 and has been performing for promotions such as Beyond, Wrestling Open, and Evil Uno’s Mystery Wrestling in Quebec. He also discussed his former tag team partner, Mike Santana, on the show, saying that he does not know if he would have come as far as he has in wrestling without him.

“If it wasn’t for him, especially early on in my career, and for each other, if we didn’t have each other I don’t think I would have ever made it to this point, to be honest. Now I can confidently say if I had the mentality that I have now I would 100 percent make it but I was a different human being in my early 20s.”

“When you struggle with someone, of course, you bond with somebody. You’re doing those 12–15 hour drives, we’re both broke, we’re sharing food with each other, we’re figuring it out, we’re sleeping on floors, we’re sleeping in cars. We were definitely brothers in arms for a really long time and honestly, if it wasn’t for him and vice versa for me for him, I don’t think we would have made it to the point that we made it to in our careers. And now sadly, we’re now doing the journey by ourselves, but it is what it is, that’s just life and how things happen.”

Ortiz also spoke about the importance of other New York-based wrestlers on his career, such as Homicide and Low-Ki.

“Homicide is like my wrestling dad. He is a New York City legend. For me, a wrestling legend forever.”

“Low-Ki, obviously, is a straight-laced dude, all business, and body language is unreal. I think that’s what makes Low-Ki, Low-Ki. His body language and the way he tells stories visually with his body language is on another level. I wish I had a quarter of Low-Ki’s talent.“

“Honestly, I haven’t quit wrestling because of them,” Ortiz said of all of them.

Ortiz also mentioned he has plans to open a wrestling school, and the advice he’s received from these mentors will be passed down to his students. He did not address his current status with AEW, but he remains on the company’s roster page despite not having wrestled a match for them in a year and a half.

The full interview is available below.