The Christmas Day episode of WWE Raw was about medium-eventful as far as storylines go; perhaps even barely eventful. The Raw Tag Team Championship changed hands, sure, but the next-most-eventful thing from a televised perspective was John Cena giving a stranger some clothes.
But it looks like that episode of Raw was eventful behind the scenes, as The Brian Kendrick suffered an injury in his match against Hideo Itami and needed to go to the hospital. The extent of his injuries was not known until late on Tuesday, but it looks to be pretty significant.
Kendrick reportedly suffered the injuries during the finish of the match, which saw him on the receiving end of a Go 2 Sleep that apparently hit the mark a bit too well. As you can see from the below GIF, while the camera angle didn’t look like the GTS necessarily caught him more flush than usual, he immediately came up clutching his face.
And as you can see in this next GIF, Kendrick continues to clutch and protect his face immediately after taking the loss, and is checked on by the referee.
It’s difficult to tell whether the referee made the “X” sign common with a legitimate injury on the television broadcast, but it’s also not a hard and fast rule that it is used for all real injuries, or at the end of or in between matches. WWE’s reporting of a nine-month recovery timeline for Dean Ambrose on Tuesday gives us pause, but they did announce on Tuesday night that Kendrick suffered a fractured orbital bone and fractured nasal bridge.
The orbital bone injury is similar to one that was suffered by Austin Aries last year, and that kept him out of action for months. There is currently no timeline for a potential return for Kendrick, but this sure is a crummy thing to happen on Christmas. We wish him a speedy recovery.
