WWE Star Injured During Match On Smackdown
A rising star on WWE’s Smackdown brand suffered a shoulder injury during a match on Friday night.
In the opening match on Smackdown in Raleigh, Pretty Deadly’s Elton Prince & Kit Wilson faced off against The Brawling Brutes duo of Sheamus & Ridge Holland. It was a physical match with Pretty Deadly winning when Prince exposed the top turnbuckle, Holland ran into the exposed steel and Prince hit a top rope leg drop for the pinfall win.
Unfortunately for Elton Prince, he suffered a left shoulder injury during the match, according to a report from PWInsider’s Mike Johnson. That report from Johnson noted that Prince’s left arm was in a sling after the match, which we learned more about.
The photo below is from the WWE Smackdown LowDown show on Peacock/WWE Network. As you can see here, Prince has a sling on his left arm.
During the interview with Kayla Braxton, Prince said he’ll be back in a few weeks.
“Let me make this absolutely clear to everybody. This is the kind of injury that puts the average person out for years. I’d say I’d say career-ender.
This is a career-ending injury. But not for me. Oh, no, no. I might just take a couple of weeks off. And then I’ll probably be back to, you know, I’ll be spiffing again, boy.”
Whenever a wrestler has a shoulder injury, there’s no way of really knowing the severity of the injury. There are some shoulder surgery that can put somebody on the shelf for a few weeks or two months (like Liv Morgan recently), but there can be others that require surgery and a layoff of six months or more. Hopefully in Prince’s case, he won’t be out too long.
Ridge Holland also tweeted about Prince’s injury. That’s because Holland gave Big E a belly-to-belly suplex on the floor in March 2022 which led to a broken neck for Big E, who has been out of action since that moment. Big E doesn’t blame Holland for it, but wrestling fans can be cruel and might send nasty messages to Holland because of it.
In Ridge Holland’s tweet, the British WWE Superstar noted that this injury wasn’t his fault.
So to set people straight before they get all pissy! It wasn’t the belly to belly…..it was a wonky landing from the pounce.
Out of my control.
Wishing @EltonPrince_PD a speedy recovery.— Ridge Holland (@RidgeWWE) July 15, 2023
Good luck to Elton Prince with his shoulder injury. It’s a reminder of how difficult pro wrestling can be because anybody can be injured at any time.