Last night on NXT, there was a whole storyline about the Undisputed Era trying to intimidate Tommaso Ciampa by revealing a video saved to a USB drive that showed them beating up the Velveteen Dream. Later in the show, William Regal revealed that because of his injuries from that beating, Dream won’t be able to take part in his announced NXT North American Championship rematch with Roderick Strong that was supposed to happen next week, so that match became a triple threat between Strong, Keith Lee, and Dominic Dijakovic. The question of Dream’s status and whether or not his injury was entirely kayfabe was left open by the episode.
According to Bryan Alvarez on Wrestling Observer Radio, Velveteen Dream does have a real injury, and the Undisputed Era attack was crafted as a way to write him off of TV for a while so he can actually recover. Alvarez didn’t elaborate on the nature of Dream’s injury, but Dream has been mentioned in WWE’s NXT injury reports as suffering from lumbar pain ever since the match where he lost the North American Title to Roddy Strong. Although those reports are sometimes kayfabe, if Dream is actually injured that’s probably a clue.
