Speaking on HOT 97, Swerve Strickland said he tries to stay away from pills and instead looks for recovery methods that don’t involve medication.
“There is no real recovery. Just heating pad, ice, lay down. I try to avoid avoid pills as much as possible because I want to try to find some remedy that doesn’t require medication or like abusing it or you know? Heating pad… I don’t smoke, I never smoked so. There’s a lot of wrestlers, for a long time, it was outlawed. Like, you’d get popped for tests and stuff like that. Now it’s regular. It’s, like, oh, okay. I understand it. I get it. It’s just not for me.”
Strickland knows that toll firsthand. During the same interview, he revealed that he tore his meniscus in 2019 and kept wrestling on it for more than five years. He finally had surgery on August 27, 2025, three days after his match against Kazuchika Okada at AEW Forbidden Door.
Months later, Strickland told Forbes that the pain was mostly a post-match issue, describing long icing sessions after getting home and difficulty walking through airports.
Strickland currently holds the AEW World Trios Championship alongside Austin Creed and Kofi. The trio retained for the second time on Wednesday’s Dynamite (September 9), defeating Orange Cassidy, Kyle O’Reilly, and Roderick Strong.