Its a who’s who of Wrestlers on the WWEs injury list at the moment, and they’re dropping like flies in the WWE with a reasonable percentage of the Main Roster down with a multiple amount of injuries making WrestleMania plans drastically shift. Coming out of Royal Rumble 2016, the main roster is drastically different to that which left Wrestlemania 31 last year. We’re going to do our best here today to take a look at who is hurt, how long they’ll be hurt for, and how it happened. Let’s start off with the Franchise player himself, and we’re not talking about Shane Douglas… His name is John Cena.
John Cena’s injury was a mystery, with his last match being against Alberto Del Rio on RAW after Christmas, having previously dropped the US Championship in a match at Hell in a Cell in October. The first anyone heard about it was when John himself announced that he was going to be having shoulder surgery with Dr Jeffrey Dugas at the Andrews Sports Medicine centre.
“He had a complete tear of a small portion of the rear rotator cuff tendon, the infraspinatus — toward the top-back of his shoulder — which I repaired,” Dr. Dugas told WWE.com. “Also, there was a large piece of loose tissue in his shoulder that needed to be removed.”
Rather upside down start to 2016 as tomorrow I will head to Birmingham for shoulder surgery. Life's full of set backs but #nevergiveup
— John Cena (@JohnCena) January 7, 2016
Little is known about the injury but John Cena worked practically every show and has done for the past 12 years except for his injuries so many are saying that general wear & tear on Johns’ body was to blame as oppose to a specific moment. John is out indefinitely, and we’re looking at Summerslam for any sort of comeback.
Speaking of John Cena, his Girlfriend also struck down with an injury. Nikki Bella was the Divas Champion for most of 2015, but since dropping that Championship to Charlotte Flair she disappeared. Nikki did the same as Cena, and announced her injury online, this time to E! News.
“I have a broken neck, a pretty bad herniated disk, but what makes mine a little bit difficult than most people is that I have some disk behind my vertebrae so with a lot of prayers we’re gonna pray that the doctors can get the piece behind my vertebrae with just a bone fusion, I have honestly one of the most amazing doctors,” Nikki said. “And I know that he’s gonna do so amazing and I’m going to have the best comeback story that anyone has ever heard of.”
TWM Journalist Jade-Louise had this to say:
Nikki has been experiencing pain in her neck area since July 2015 and after having an MRI back in October, Nikki stopped competing entirely. Nikki said she should not be in hospital more than a day or two.
“But unfortunately I will be at home with a neck brace for three months, no travel. I can barely be in the car because of the spot where my injury is in, my C6 my C7, I have to try as much as I can not to move my neck so it can heal.”
“In six months’ time is when I will get that final X-ray to be like, ‘Hey look you can get back in that ring and kick some a–,'”
The surgery however, as aforementioned could be career ending and Nikki went on to say the doctors will only know if she can wrestle again after her neck heals. Nikki stated when asked that her “Finishing Maneuver” The Rack Attack’ is responsible for a lot of the pain and injury caused to her neck. Nikki Bella is expected back around the same time as John Cena, but with a neck injury you never really know how the recovery can go. Nikki had successful surgery, but her Wrestling Career might well be over while her sister Brie Bella is also expected to leave the Wrestling Business to make a family with Bryan.
This leads us onto one of the more concerning injuries on this list, Tyson Kidd who is lucky to be alive and walking. Tyson’s injury occurred during a random Dark Match against Samoa Joe, when Joe hit Kidd with the Muscle Buster in San Antonio before Raw.
5% of people survive this injury. 16 staples, 4 screws and a rod later and luckily I survived to tell my story. pic.twitter.com/hXpXpA0aAF
— TJ Wilson (@TJWilson) July 7, 2015
Tyson himself said that only 5% of people survive this type of injury, just to show how lucky he actually was. It’s a similar injury to what Christopher Reeve (Famous for playing Superman in the Late 70’s & 80s), and it would confine “Superman” to a wheelchair. Will Tyson ever step into the ring again? No one knows, but we should all be happy that he’s still breathing and tweeting. You can find him on Total Divas’, which is showing his road to recovery.
His partner, Cesaro, is also on the mend. Another shoulder injury for the list, which seemed to be a lingering injury from various, knocks. As of this article, he is slated to back anytime after Wrestlemania (4-6 months out November) and by that time he could be billed as a massive star, if his return is handled well. The Cesaro Section lives on, and hopefully it will during the Spring.
On the subject of the shoulders, once again Randy Orton is injured. He went down around the same time as Cesaro, however with Randy it’s a continuous problem ever since his first shoulder injury in October 2002 after his debut. Who can forget the legendary Randy News Network?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-_fsMTdazs
This would begin his heel turn, and his joining Evolution which would slingshot him into the main event scene for the next few years until present day. Randy’s latest shoulder problem happened before Hell in a Cell, where he was going to face Bray Wyatt. In storyline, Bray took the credit, but in reality;
“Randy has suffered from a dislocated shoulder. He’s had chronic problems with his shoulder, and a recent MRI that was done found he has a Bankart lesion in his shoulder, some stretched ligaments and a partially torn rotator cuff,” WWE physician Dr. Steve Daquino told WWE.com. “At this point it’s a matter of when he dislocates the shoulder again, and not if. It looks like he might require surgery and recovery time for such a surgery would be four to six months.”
Randy does not have an expected time back in the ring, but he was also due to have neck surgery after his shoulder to amend the damage and potentially fix the other issues. Regardless, Randy hasn’t been planned for Wrestlemania, unless he has a sensational return at the show of shows.
One man who won’t return, is Daniel Bryan. Daniel retired due to a series of concussions, and after fighting the doctors, gave in to demands that he should never wrestle again. We have covered this previously, which you can find in our Daniel Bryan News report. Bryan last wrestled in a tag team match with John Cena against Tyson Kidd & Cesaro on a Smackdown show and hasn’t wrestled since. He allegedly planned on going to CMLL if his WWE Doctors wouldn’t clear him, but after some soul search he had an empowering and emotional goodbye on Monday Night Raw a couple of weeks ago.
One man who will return, and he will be a Welcome one after Wrestlemania is arguably the best wrestler of 2015. Seth Rollins. Seth went down with a torn ACL, a torn MCL and a torn Medial Meniscus during a routine Sunsetflip Powerbomb to Kane in Dublin. Effectively destroying his left leg. Seth had to drop his WWE Championship, a reign that lasted 220 days, in which he became the #1 Heel in the company over that time.
The latest on his recovery is that he is ahead of schedule, and a positive sign of that is the signing up for the Crossfit Open that he has competed in for the past few years. A very good sign that he is healing well, and who knows… Maybe he’ll return to save the day at Wrestlemania once again, but I would wager his return is more likely at Summerslam.
As of the time of writing, there aren’t any other major injuries to the roster but just in the post alone you could create a WWE Wrestlemania card with the likes of Seth Rollins, John Cena, Tyson Kidd, Daniel Bryan, the Bellas and Randy Orton. This has given the WWE a massive wake-up call, in some sense, with the rise of talents like Dean Ambrose having a major match at Wrestlemania this year, and some surprises on the RAWs leading up to it.
Perhaps there is a light at the end of the tunnel, in a sense that with atleast 4 main event talents away recovering, they can promote new talent such as the NXT Crew, and the lesser used talent such as the Social Outcasts, and a unexpected push of Kalisto as the United States Champion and Kevin Owens becoming the face of Smackdown.
WWE could do alot worse, but if more injuries occur then they might be in trouble if they continue to not create brand new stars, much like another company in the past couldn’t do… WCW.