Predicting How And When Every Injured WWE Star Will Return

The Royal Rumble is right around the corner...

Jeff Hardy
WWE.com

With the road to WrestleMania quickly approaching, this is the time of year WWE wants as much of their roster to be as healthy as possible to ensure they can put together the best card for the Show of Shows imaginable.

Likewise, no Superstar wants to miss out on the biggest night/paycheck of their career due to injury. On the bright side, WWE's disabled list is currently shorter than it's been in a while, especially with multiple people returning in recent weeks between Sheamus, The Usos and Big Show.

That said, there are still a handful of wrestlers who are waiting to come back from their long layoffs, with some closer to an in-ring return than others. It's also possible some of these stars are ready to return but are being kept off TV until WWE has a plan in place for them (ensuring they don't get lost in the shuffle in the buildup to WrestleMania).

In the meantime, all we can do as fans is speculate when and how they'll be brought back into the fold and whether they'll make much of a difference in the daily goings-on in WWE when they eventually resurface.

Robert Roode and The Colons will not be included as they currently suspended by the company, but everyone else is eligible to be included.

10. Xavier Woods

Jeff Hardy
WWE

Xavier Woods has always been the glue that has held The New Day together and thus his absence has been felt since he went down with an Achilles tendon tear in October.

One month earlier, he and Big E were riding high as the SmackDown Tag Team champions and were primed to regain the gold while Kofi Kingston teased turning heel following his swift loss of the WWE Championship. Of course, Woods getting hurt threw those plans into disarray and led to Kingston and Big E winning the belts back themselves (without going through with the rumored character change).

Although he's been on the shelf for almost three months at this point, Woods is bound to be out longer than most on this list because of the nature of his injury. Edge suffered something similar in 2009 and was gone for only six months, but it's hard to say at this current point whether Woods will have that kind of miraculous recovery.

It's more likely he'll be out until around August, if not a little later (October being worst case scenario, hopefully). Upon his return, expect him to be slotted right back into the tag team ranks without missing a beat.

Kingston and Big E will be just fine for now, but Woods' wacky ringside antics will most certainly be missed in the meantime.

In this post: 
WWE
 
Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Since 2008, Graham has been a diehard pro wrestling fan and, in 2010, he combined his passions for WWE and writing when he joined Bleacher Report. Equipped with a master's in journalism, Graham has contributed to WhatCulture, FanSided's Daily DDT, Sports Betting Dime, and GateHouse Media. Along the way, he has conducted interviews with wrestling superstars like Chris Jericho, Edge, Goldberg, Christian, Diamond Dallas Page, Jim Ross, Adam Cole, Tessa Blanchard, Ryback, and Nick Aldis among others.