Rick Knox Recounts Working Through A Broken Arm At Lucha Underground

Current AEW referee Rick Knox recently appeared on the Lucha Underground-focused podcast Goin’ Underground (per Fightful), where he shared some harrowing details about working through significant injuries during his tenure with the promotion.

Knox, a referee for Lucha Underground’s entire run, didn’t let severe physical setbacks keep him from the Temple. He recounted how he managed to get through multiple tapings while dealing with a broken arm. In another instance, Knox revealed he suffered a broken collarbone but still continued his duties.

“I came in — I wanna say just a couple weeks before, I had got cracked in the arm by Roderick Strong at PWG. I think that was that time and so I came in (to Lucha Underground) with it, with the cast on and yeah, I was a little bit of trepidating like, oh my God, should I say anything? Should I just show up? What do I do? You know, I think I’m just gonna show up and kind of just say, hey! I’m here. And to everyone’s credit, they trusted my belief in myself that I’d be okay and I was. Everything worked out fine. I had worked with a broken arm before. It was fine. We taped so many episodes in such a short time, it looks like I have a broken arm the entire first season almost but, in reality, it was probably just the first couple tapings. Then, fast-forward to season four, yeah, I remember there was a lot of things leading up. I think several referees were supposed to run in, get bumped, this and that and so I was supposed to take the chokeslam from Mil Muertes and so I’m like, okay, well, that’s a rough one but, it’s up and it’s down. I can do this. How hard could a chokeslam be? Up and then down, you know? What I kind of forgot and this is stupid because I mean, I’d been working with the guy for the last… when Mil Muertes did the chokeslam, he went up and spun around and kind of threw you around so, I went up and next thing I know, I lost all sense of where I was. Didn’t know which way was up, which way was down. Didn’t know which way I was going and then landed so awkwardly that my collarbone basically cracked and I had a little pyramid sticking out of my chest there, and you know, quickly got rushed off to the emergency room and unfortunately missed pretty much the rest of the season. I think I came back, maybe just did some run-ins on the last couple episodes but that was about it. Kind of was done for Knoxy. Yup.”