Kalisto: August 2021 battle with COVID-19 ‘nearly ended him’
Image: AEW
The former Kalisto in WWE took to Instagram Wednesday to detail his past battle with COVID-19, saying the virus “nearly ended him.”
In the post seen below, he said he was hospitalized for the entire month of August and nearly had two heart attacks in addition to the virus and a stomach ulcer, adding that he “only had a day to prepare for my return on tv.” That was a reference to a SmackDown match he had with Cesaro — his first such action since December 2019.
“Beyond my belief I thought I never get this bad, but i took that as a sign, really trained hard and rolled the dice and Lucha. 2022 is all I focus on…LUCHA always like there’s no tomorrow, he wrote.
He was released by WWE in April 2021.
Returning to his old working name of Samuray del Sol, he made his return in a tag team match with Aero Star against AAA Tag Team Champions FTR on the November 3rd AEW Dynamite. He drew criticism after the fact for invoking the name of the late Brodie Lee, saying he “prayed and talked” with Lee before the match and thanked him for showing him his home.”
Huber’s widow and AEW community outreach team member Amanda Huber and Chris Jericho called del Sol out both directly and indirectly for misspelling Huber’s first name with our Bryan Alvarez saying that Huber and others were “very, very upset” by the tweet.
Since then, del Sol has wrestled twice, one for The Crash in a MLW co-promoted show and again in the five-way for the vacant AAA Mega title at TripleMania Regia.