Report: The Bludgeon Brothers Have Been Cleared to Return to WWE Smackdown
The Bludgeon Brothers duo of Harper and Rowan are ready to return to the ring as soon as next Tuesday at Smackdown in Wichita, Kansas. That’s according to Mike Johnson of PWInsider, who noted that (Erick) Rowan was at the WWE Performance Center this week in Orlando to get cleared to return to action. Everything went well there, so Harper will be returning with his partner.
The reason for the team’s absence is that Rowan had a torn biceps after the Bludgeon Brothers match with The New Day at SummerSlam 2018. That injury required surgery and the timeline was 4-6 months recovery for Rowan and that means it’s nearly five months after the surgery, so the timeline was correct. That’s the third upper body injury for Rowan in the last four years because he had a torn biceps injury in June 2015 and after he returned to action in early 2016, he suffered a shoulder injury in October 2016 that required surgery. Here’s hoping the 37-year-old big man has many injury free years ahead of him.
As for Harper, he was kept off TV while his partner Rowan was recovering from his surgery. Several months ago, it was reported that he had wrist surgery because he was seen in a cast.
The last match the Bludgeon Brothers had was an excellent match in the main event of Smackdown on August 21, 2018, when they dropped the SD Tag Team Titles to the New Day in an excellent No Disqualification Match. Rowan worked that match with a torn biceps and they went 15 minutes, so he was likely in a lot of pain even though he probably didn’t admit it.
It was also reported at the time that the Bludgeon Brothers only lost the Smackdown Tag Team Titles because of the injury. There were no plans to take the titles off them at that time.
It should be noted that while the Bludgeon Brothers will be back at Smackdown next week, it doesn’t mean they will be on the show. It’s possible that WWE will keep them on the sideline until they find the right storyline. Perhaps there will be video packages about their return since that was done in the past as well.
Analysis: That’s great news. I’ve always liked the team and they are good workers for their size, especially Harper. The term “underrated” comes to mind when people think of Harper and it should because he could be doing a lot more in WWE. At least he’s still active on Twitter reminding us what day it is.
It's Wednesday. You know what that means.
— Brodie Lee (@ThisBrodieLee) January 16, 2019
If I had to guess, I think WWE will feature them in video packages for a few weeks before they are back on TV kicking ass.