8 injuries that changed the face of WWE
Injuries are an unfortunate part of pro wrestling. Most wrestlers work hurt most of the time due to the inherently-painful nature of wrestling, and likely all of them hope to never suffer a serious injury that would prevent them from wrestling.
Sadly, such injuries do occur more often than not, and when they happen they have serious consequences on any promotion’s long-term booking and creative directions. WWE is no stranger to these problems, as they’ve struggled many times with having to change their directions completely due to wrestlers getting injured.
As much as wrestlers themselves might try to work through the pain and continue working, there are some types of injuries whereby doing this is simply impossible. And when these wrestlers do end up on the shelf, their absence has serious and long-term effects on WWE’s booking.
Here are eight injuries that effectively changed the face of WWE.
#8 Triple H's first quad injury
In 2001, Triple H was one of WWE’s biggest stars, and was pushed prominently as ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin’s tag team partner. However, all of this came to a sudden end when Triple H suffered a devastating quadriceps tear in May 2001.
That injury put him on the shelf for about eight months, which caused The Cerebral Assassin to miss the entire Invasion storyline. Without Triple H representing WWE in that storyline, it meant that there were fewer top stars representing Vince’s promotion in the WWE vs. WCW storyline.
Had he been healthy and capable of wrestling, there could’ve been more big matches and the Invasion storyline could’ve had more depth with Triple H possibly playing the role of a WWE wrestler that suffered when he performed in WCW.