Gregory Iron details why he was not able to be at AEW in Cleveland.
The week of January 26th, AEW Dynamite emanated from the Wolstein Center in Cleveland, Ohio. That edition of Dynamite featured Ohio’s own Wardlow in action and the AEW debut of Danhausen.
Ohio native Gregory Iron was scheduled to be at AEW on 1/26 as well and during the latest episode of his Iron-On Wrestling podcast, he explained why that did not come to fruition. Gregory received an email from AEW and he was told to arrive to the venue with a negative PCR COVID test along with his blood work. He was told to be tested for Hepatitis B, C and HIV.
Gregory was instructed to get this done two days before Dynamite, but even with a tight window, he was able to get his blood drawn in time.
I got an email from AEW asking me to be at the show on Wednesday and I was like, ‘What the f*ck?’ So I was pretty excited. In this email, it said I required a PCR COVID test and I needed to get blood work done… So, don’t know what exactly I was going to do but I wanted to be there, right?… I was scrambling to get a blood test done because those don’t come very quickly usually. So, that Monday, was trying to get some stuff done and I was able to get an appointment at my doctor’s office for the following day. So, that morning, I go to my doctor, Tuesday morning and I asked my doctor, ‘What are the chances I get this blood work by tomorrow at 1?’ Because that’s the stipulation. I gotta be down at the — what used to be the C.S.U. Convocation Center in Cleveland. They used to do WCW Nitro there. They’ve only done I believe only one WWE show there because they usually run ‘The Gun’, the Q, Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, whatever the f*ck it’s called now. But, pretty famous venue for wrestling over the years and I had to be there by 1 PM. So my doctor assured me, ‘Yes, I will put it in for STAT’ and well I requested STAT.
And so, the doctor said, ‘Yes, you should be able to get it by the morning’ so I was like, ‘Cool.’ But I had to go to a different hospital so I was in Avon, Ohio. I had to travel to Lorain, Ohio which is about 25 minutes [away]. At the emergency room, they had a lab where I could get this done. So, this lady’s doing my blood work and I need Hepatitis B, C and HIV and so as long as I got that, I’d be good to go, right? And I didn’t want to go get this rapid PCR test because when you get it at the last second, your insurance doesn’t cover it. You need to pay $175 for this test so before I did that, I wanted to make sure I could get this blood work done. So now that my doctor’s confirmed it, I’m getting blood drawn, this is about 3 o’clock on Tuesday. They tell me, ‘Because it’s STAT, you should have these results by 5 PM when we close. I mean we gotta get this done now’ and I was like, ‘Oh, f*ck yeah. This is awesome.’ I have some high hopes that I’m gonna be at AEW. Big things could be popping, you know? And so, I go to urgent care, I pay $175 for this PCR rapid test and I get it back in an hour, I am negative of COVID, thank you very much. I had date night with my girlfriend which we do every Tuesday so we spent some time together.
On Wednesday, when Iron went to pick up his blood work results, he discovered that the doctor only tested him for Hepatitis C and HIV.
He had to drive back to the hospital where he got his blood drawn and detailed the conversation he had with the doctor who forgot to test him for Hepatitis B. While he was getting his blood drawn the second go-around in hopes of being able to make the appearance, she informed him that it would not be possible to turn over the results in that short of a timespan.
So anyways, I get up the next morning, I’m thinking to myself, ‘I wanna get a good workout in for AEW’ but something in my brain said, ‘You know what? You haven’t got these test results yet Greg. So maybe go directly to the doctor in Avon where you got them.’ So I got there about 8 o’clock. I’m talking to the secretary. She has to call some people and she goes, ‘Well, they drew your blood, but it looks like they only drew it for C and HIV but not Hepatitis B. So you have to go back to Lorain Hospital for Hepatitis B’ and now I’m thinking to myself, ‘F*ck! There’s no way I’m gonna get that back today. But you said there might be a possibility.’ I’m thinking, ‘This can’t be.’ So, now, I’ve got to drive 25 minutes back to the Lorain Hospital, okay? And I wanna point out that on this morning, for some reason on that Wednesday, without working out for a couple days, I was tanned, I was jacked, I was ready to go, okay? I go back out to Lorain. The day before when I was trying to get this emergency thing done, there was nobody waiting for blood work. Now, there’s seven people in front of me, okay? So I’m sitting there for an hour. Finally, lady calls me in and she goes, um, ‘Okay, so we’re doing this Hep B thing and –’ she — ‘Oh, you were just here the day before.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. Well you forgot to draw this Hepatitis B that I needed’ and she goes — and she’s setting everything up, ‘I don’t understand why you didn’t do this a week ago’ and I’m sitting there already pissed and I go, ‘Well I didn’t know a week ago.’ She’s like, ‘It takes a while for blood work to come back.’ I’m like, ‘I understand. That’s why I put it in for STAT and wanted you to draw this for yesterday.’ I’m trying not to be a dick because if it’s possible to get this done, I don’t want to do anything — because I know how I operate. If someone’s gonna get snippy with me, I’m gonna be like, ‘Oh well, f*ck you.’ So I said, ‘Had I would’ve known earlier than Monday around 2 PM, I would’ve done it last week’ and then she goes, ‘Well there’s no way you’re gonna get this Hepatitis B back by 1 PM’ and I’m just sitting there dejected, you know? And she goes, ‘Can’t you just miss one wrestling match?’ And I looked at her and as calm as I could, I said, ‘Well, you know, this particular wrestling match is for the man — he’s the son of a gentleman who owns the Jacksonville Jaguars. They have millions of dollars and it’s a great opportunity for exposure in front of thousands of fans in downtown Cleveland, my hometown so, if I could not miss this one, I would like to. I mean I don’t know’ and she’s like, ‘Oh,’ because apparently she didn’t, you know, I don’t know. She questions legitimacy of what I’m trying to f*cking do here and so, I get my blood drawn for no reason and I had to call the contacts of mine from AEW as the stuff wasn’t coming in at about 12 at that point. I had to call and say that I could not be there because I do not have the blood work done and what made this worse was, I had a photographer and a couple of other people contact me about 2 or 3 o’clock from AEW and go, ‘Wow, your name is on my list to do photos of you today. Your name’s on the list to be back here. I can’t wait to see you’ and I was just like, well that’s just putting salt in the wound. So, I did not obviously get to do AEW.
Gregory Iron was present at GCW’s Hammerstein Ballroom show. He was a part of a segment alongside members of 44.OH as they faced off with Sabu, Bill Alfonso, Mance Warner and Matthew Justice.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Iron-On Wrestling with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
