Marko Stunt has been back in the news recently.
The former AEW star made headlines due to a recent car ad where he was advertising the hell out of the dealership. It was a surprise to many as most fans thought that Stunt was still fighting on the indies, but the truth is, Marko Stunt actually retired in late 2024.
That had nothing to do with his AEW exit as the 29-year-old suffered a major back injury that forced him to hang up the boots for good. Stunt detailed his reasoning for reluctantly being forced to give up something he dedicated a good portion to his life too.
“I wrestled on the independents for quite a while and I ended up getting hurt pretty bad.” He told Busted Open Radio. There was one match for GCW and I did a missile drop kick off the top rope, I didn’t have my contacts in because they got ripped out the night before. I had my glasses, but I can’t wrestle with them on. So I couldn’t see very well, my depth perception wasn’t right. So I jumped off the top rope for a missile drop kick and I ended up almost standing on top of the dude and I kicked off, went backwards and landed on the back of my head on the mat, knocking myself out. I don’t remember it, I remember seeing the video of it. It was pretty dumb, I ended up finishing the match.
The finish of the match was me taking a brain buster of all things, that’s kind of what lead to me being gone from AEW. We were going to be on the Jericho Cruise the next week, I wasn’t going to lie to them (AEW). The medical team wouldn’t allow me to wrestle, I had just gotten a few concussions prior to that. They ended up sitting me out for a few months, which caused my contract to expire. I got told they were not going to renew my contract or anything, it sucked, I was pretty devastated."
Though the string of injuries was a big part of the reason AEW didn’t renew his contract, that wasn’t the reason he had to leave the business for good. Ultimately, it was a stupid bump in GCW that had his spine floating somewhere.
"That first instant, you kind of want to give up, but I tried not to (give up). I ended up going back to wrestling on the independents and everything for GCW, I had a blast with that and I always have a love for GCW.
They allowed me to have that publicity to get to AEW, so I went back with them and wrestled for a while. My back was really, really messed up and I didn’t know what was going on. My hips were bothering me, so I went to the doctor and got an X-Ray because I did a match for a show that me and my buddy put together. I did this stupid bump, I did a run-in and I went to the top rope and somebody came up and shoved me,” Stunt said.
“I did a front flip to the apron, but there was no padding on the apron, so I just hit the metal bar that was there. I ended up going to the doctor the next day because I could barely walk, they did the X-Rays and stuff and I actually broken my back. My L5 was cracked and had a chip in it, there is a piece of my spine just floating in there somewhere."
Despite now settling his life as a car salesman, Marko Stunt is not ashamed whatsoever. He certainly didn’t expect the video to go viral, but he had no issues taking advantage of it.
“I was never actually planning on using X or whatever to promote my car sales gig. What happened was I filmed the video that you guys saw, it was a fun video. I posted it on my TikTok and Facebook. I woke up the next morning and it had slightly blown up, a couple of hours later, my buddy texted me the X link. The news sites picked it up and it kind of started flowing from there, I figured its out there and I mine as well start flowing with it. It’s not something I’m ashamed of at all, I never think to use X to my advantage.
It was not something I was going to do, it happened organically and I just ran with it. It’s gotten crazy over the last couple of days, I’ve gotten hundreds of messages and a lot of text messages from friends in the business. It is kind of cool seeing everybody talking about it, it’s been mostly positive as well, which is rare with wrestling Twitter,”
It’s a shame that Marko Stunt’s career had to end abruptly as he was a talented performer. From the sounds of it, the guy sounds happy with his current gig, which is always great. Hopefully, he continues to find success outside of the wrestling market.