10 Wrestlers Who Returned From Injury Better Than Before
Success stories that prove that going down with injury isn't quite the end of the world.
It was an evening to forget for Drew McIntyre back at NXT Takeover: WarGames, not because he lost the NXT Championship to Andrade "Cien" Almas but because he tore his biceps along the way.
In the final move of the match, Almas looked to hit McIntyre with a high angle draping DDT, but the two were slightly out of sync. When McIntyre eventually went down, his left arm was still holding the rope, which seemingly caused the tear.
There's currently no word on how serious the injury is, although it does look like it’ll keep him out of action for a fair amount of time, potentially waylaying a likely main roster call-up that probably wasn't far away.
If it’s a silver lining McIntyre's looking for, though, then he may take solace in the fact that plenty of others before him have come back from injuries and gone on to reach even greater heights. Whether they’ve been better in the ring, enjoyed more championship success or simply been more over than previously, time and again we’ve seen guys and girls come good after returning from a stint on the shelf.
Here, we look back at ten such examples from over the years.
10. John Cena
On 1 October 2007, John Cena tore his right pectoral muscle clean off the bone. Not that there’s necessarily a good time for that to happen, but in this case the timing could hardly have been worse.
Cena was WWE Champion and had been for over a year, in what was the longest run with the title since Hulk Hogan’s four-year reign way back in the 1980s. Plus, the timing meant that with an estimated eight-month recovery time at minimum, Cena was expected to miss the following year’s WrestleMania.
Of course, that estimation was blown completely out of the water when the former champ made a surprise comeback at the 2008 Royal Rumble, less than three months after undergoing surgery.
After years of dividing audiences, he had a Madison Square Garden crowd going absolutely nuts when he returned in the Rumble at No. 30. From there, he won the match before eventually going on to capture a staggering 13 further world titles, producing the best in-ring work of his career along the way and establishing himself as an all-time great in his own right.