WWE Rumours: Nikki Bella's neck injury might keep her away from wrestling full-time
Nikki Bella has been missing from the WWE program for a while now. It hasn’t been the best 12 months for the former WWE Divas Champion as she has been absent from in-ring action since October last year due to a neck and spinal injury. At the end of July, her doctors cleared her and she began training for her return to WWE.
However, during her absence, the women’s division in WWE has gone through a drastic change. WWE’s Divas division has been rebranded into the WWE Women’s division. WWE has also undergone brand split and Raw and SmackDown Live! are now independent brands.
But the most important issue remains that WWE officials are taking her injury very seriously. As first noted by Pro Wrestling Sheet earlier this week, Nikki Bella is still training but has yet to be medically cleared by WWE doctors to return to the ring. Although the progress is slow, WWE’s officials and their doctors are hesitant for good reasons, but Nikki’s training sessions at the WWE Performance Center are said to be a major step in the right direction.
It’s being said that WWE as a whole are being extremely careful about medically clearing Nikki Bella and allowing her to compete inside the ring because of the severity of her injury. WWE doctors are monitoring how her neck is recovering and reacting to the training to see if she’s healthy enough to get back into the WWE ring even on a part-time basis. It’s going to be a while before WWE doctors give her the green light for her return out of safety.
Nikki has apparently been working with brother-in-law, Daniel Bryan, to develop a new finisher for her return to WWE. It’ll most likely be a submission to help with her neck issues. Her current finishing manoeuvre “The Rack Attack” has been one of the main causes of her neck and spinal injuries. However, a submission move as a finisher will put her in the same strata as the likes of Sasha Banks, Charlotte, Becky Lynch, Natalya and even Paige who have made a big impact with submissions as their finishers. So it could be a viable option for the former Total Divas star.
As far as the brand split is concerned, Nikki Bella is expected to be drafted to SmackDown Live! with boyfriend John Cena. With talks going on of introducing a new Women’s Championship on the blue brand sometime after SummerSlam, it could be a possible motivation for the returning Bella. No matter what her finisher is when she returns, it’s likely that she’ll be pushed heavily on SmackDown Live! since the brand could use more women with experience.