Josh Alexander Says He Knew About His Return At IMPACT Slammiversary ‘Maybe 72 Hours’ Ahead Of Time

Josh Alexander recalls how his return at IMPACT Slammiversary came about.

Josh Alexander recalls how his return at IMPACT Slammiversary came about.

Alexander tore his triceps in March, and the injury forced him to relinquish the IMPACT World Championship. He returned at IMPACT Slammiversary, where he confronted Alex Shelley. The former champion had his first match back at IMPACT x NJPW Multiverse United 2 on August 20.

In an interview with Bill Pritchard of WrestleZone, Alexander was asked to describe how long in advance he knew about the plan for his return. He responded by noting that he knew about 72 hours ahead of time.

“Oh, maybe 72 hours? I knew I was feeling good. I knew I had my appointment with my doctor for the checkup, and he was saying optimistically, the best was mid-July. We of course were in early July, and Scott D’Amore gave me a call a few days before, and he said, ‘We’re going to bring you in here, we’re gonna do this, this, and this.’ I had already been training in-ring as I moved down here to Windsor. So I’d been training in-ring, so Scott had seen me in the ring, trying to get some movements out and see if I still had it and stuff like that. I was feeling good, so we were all very confident in that. Obviously, we held off another month from any in-ring action to kind of give me that buffer zone there, but things are good,” Alexander said.

Alexander was also asked about his injury and whether he planned to adjust anything with his wrestling style before he returned to the ring. Alexander noted that he intended to, but once he was in the ring, he fell back into old habits, and everything was fine. He also stated that he had to overcome some of the mental hurdles that come with returning from an injury.

“Yeah, there’s obvious movements that involve my tricep that would be more strenuous on it that I planned to avoid. But then once you get in the mix with everything, you just kind of fall into those old habits of how it happened. They say it’s like riding a bike. All those things kind of got thrown to the wayside and I just ended up doing them anyway, and it felt fine. It was all just the mental hurdles of wanting to avoid these things, being afraid of these things happening again. As I learned with my neck eight years ago now, when I came back from my neck injury, you can’t really go in with any hesitations and any of those mind-blocks in there because you’re just going to injure yourself elsewhere, you’re gonna compromise yourself somehow. So I just threw it all out there, and it’s been fine,” Alexander said.

In another interview, Alexander noted that he might have been able to return sooner if he didn’t get surgery. Check out his comments here.

Alexander will compete on the September 7 episode of IMPACT Wrestling. Click here to check out the card.

At IMPACT Victory Road, Alexander will face Steve Maclin. Check out the card here.

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