Speculation started moments after Seth Rollins’ knee buckled during his Saturday Night’s Main Event match with LA Knight two night ago (July 12). As fans hoped for a sign that Rollins was okay, reports started coming in that he’d suffered a legitimate injury. Those reports seemed to be backed up by videos like this one of Seth after Knight’s impromptu-seeming victory over him on Saturday night in Atlanta:
Rollins has a history of knee problems. He missed almost a year after tearing his ACL, MCL, and medial meniscus in 2015, and worked through a torn meniscus that he got repaired after WrestleMania 40 last year. And at the post-Evolution press conference last night, Seth’s boss, WWE Chief Creative Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque confirmed reports Rollins was backstage at Sunday night’s all-women’s event before heading to Andrews Sports Medicine in Birmingham, Alabama for an evaluation:
“A little bit inconclusive. — doesn’t look good. But we’re in Birmingham tomorrow. He came here tonight, he was not going to miss his wife [Becky Lynch]’s performance tonight… he’sll be in Birmingham tomorrow with Dr. Dugas, we’ll get MRI and hope for the best, see where we can go with that.”
The “work” talk never completely died out, especially not after Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer amplified John Pollock of Post Wrestling’s report that WWE had been planning a Rollins injury angle for Saturday night as early as the Thursday before the show. On the latest Observer Radio, Meltzer said:
“Levesque said that he’s getting examined in Birmingham tomorrow, and John Pollock was on his show and laid out the whole scenario that he had been told a couple days earlier — I think it was on Thursday — that they were going to do this angle, and it was exactly what he was told… I will say this… everyone’s insisting that it’s real, and John Pollock said what he said, and I tried to get a confirmation from someone if John Pollock was mistaken, and they would not say that.”
The Observer’s Bryan Alvarez also said that everyone he’s spoken to insists that Rollins is hurt
“Well, there is a third option which somebody today told me what happened. They say what is going on is, the reason these stories are conflicting is because he is hurt — but what happened on Saturday was a storyline. Meaning he is hurt, but he did not get hurt on that spot. That spot was a cover for an injury that he has, which he will have worked on — they are in Birmingham. So the idea… was he will be out of action for a little while, but they’re gonna say, like, nine months, or whatever, full — they’ll give this whole thing, but he will be back much sooner than that. So actually that would cover every base.”
Meltzer connected the dots, saying the storyline injury could be to set-up a surprise “early” return after Rollins actual injury is addressed:
“I’ll just say that that makes the most sense, because one of the things I was told was, basically that the [Money in the Bank] cash-in will come out of nowhere.”
It may initially seem a little far-fetched, but WWE has seemed to be working angles with actual behind-the-scenes issues under Triple H (the shifting WrestleMania main events last year come to mind, as does Alexa Bliss’ surprise Royal Rumble return).
We’ll see if what we learn and how the story plays out from here gives us confirmation one way or the other.
Pro wrestling, everybody!
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