So look, LOOK, I’m not going to show the legs video. We’re not even going to show a still image from the legs video. Like, if that’s why you’re here you’ll have to go elsewhere because it’s genuinely too upsetting to show and I don’t want to surprise anyone with it because, like, it changes you, yikes.
I’m in two minds about some of the stuff in this list too be honest, but the legs video was a step too far, pun definitely not intended. Apologies if that makes me a soyboy cuck, but there we go.
Point is, wrestling’s bloody DANGEROUS, lads, featuring many dangerous lads, landing dangerous bad. Turns out NXT and AEW weren’t just competing for ratings this year, they were competing to see how many athletes they could shelve.
So this list is about injuries we saw happen live, so Edge getting injured in a backlash re-shoot doesn’t count, nor does Johnny Gargano almost being killed by a Ridge Holland power slam on a pre-taped NXT or Ridge Holland’s own OH GOD NO AWFUL NXT, but yeah, just so you know that we didn’t forget them, because… oh god lord no.
10. Chelsea Green (Smackdown, November 13)
Fate has not been kind to Chelsea Green. I mean considering she was doing good stuff with Robert Stone in NXT, but got called up to Raw for a debut segment that ended up getting cut and then was stuck in purgatory for months, WWE has also not been kind to Chelsea Green, but this time it was mostly fate’s fault.
After an age of Chelsea Green being AWOL from TV, she made her official SmackDown debut on November 13, before immediately breaking her wrist in an almost imperceptible moment during a fatal fourway match with Natalya, Liv Morgan and Tamina.
Green was standing on the ring apron when she was drop-kicked off by Liv Morgan. As she lands, and you can barely see it, her hand thumbs to the ground, before she immediately grabs for it.
Chelsea Green was supposed to win the match and advance to Survivor Series, however the injury put paid to that with Liv Morgan going over instead. Awful, awful luck.
9. Angel Garza (Clash of Champions)
WWE ran some form of Angel Garza vs Street profits match 11 times in 2020. F**king 11 times, either singles or tag with Andrade or tag with Austin Theory.
Like a FIFTH of the year’s programming featured Garza mixing it up with Montez Ford or Angelo Dawkins. At this point he might as well move in with them Three’s Company style. By the way, Dawkins would be the Janet, getting annoyed at Garza leaving his tearway pants all over the apartment.
During their last match at Clash of Champions, Garza literally couldn’t take any more and suffered a quad injury. Towards the close of the match, Garza catches a kick from Montez ford before hitting him with a knee. However, apparently he put a bit too much mustard on it and felt a pop, which ended up being a small quad tear.
To the audience at home it was clear that something was wrong as Garza had difficulty standing, tagged out, then spent the rest of the match on the floor outside, leading to a hurried, and botched, finish.
Thankfully, by sitting out the rest of the match, the injury didn’t get a lot worse, and Garza only missed a few weeks of action.
8. Kris Statlander (Dynamite, June 10)
Like Chelsea Green’s injury, you wouldn’t know you’d seen Kris Statlander get hurt in her tag match teaming with Hikaru Shida vs Nyla Rose and Penelope Ford if you weren’t told about it in the news after the fact.
Towards the finish of the match, Kip Sabian gets involved, little rascal that he is, when Statlander hits him with a tope suicida, as she falls she lands on her knees, which ends up giving her a high grade tear in her ACL.
As of writing this list, Statlander still hasn’t returned to the ring after having surgery at the end of July.
This year’s been absolutely BRUTAL to AEW’s women’s division, with some being unable to travel due to covid, leading to some like Bea Priestly and Sadie Gibbs being released, Statlander getting injured, Abadon suffering a throat injury in a pre-taped match and needing to be hospitalised, and then, of course, this…
7. Britt Baker (Dynamite, May 20)
One of the few live Dynamites before Double or Nothing, the May 20 edition of the show saw two wrestlers getting injured in the form of Rey Fenix and as would turn out to be serious, Britt Baker DMD.
Baker was set to wrestle Kris Statlander at Double or Nothing, that match carried a terrible curse I guess. During a tag match pitting Britt Baker and Nyla Rose against Hikaru Shida and Statlander, Baker was sat in the corner, when the babyfaces pick up Nyla Rose and hoof her right onto Britt’s knee.
First of all, terrible idea for a spot, if someone of Nyla’s size is going to land on someone else, she should be the one controlling her trajectory, and second, yup, straight away you knew. Rose landed right on the leg, and Baker immediately turns to it, not in melodramatic selling fashion but like, oh f**k.
Then, in what’s become a bit of a grim trend in AEW this year, the injury is not recognised immediately the match continues and while its clear that Baker cannot jump to take a driver from statlander she’s hit with the move anyway, before she’s mercifully allowed to tag out.
Awful stuff, but top credit to Baker who turned her wheelchair-bound role model character into one of Dynamite’s weekly highlights.
6. Karrion Kross (NXT TakeOver XXX)
Seriously, though. F**K 2020. Like, yes for obvious reasons, but so many of the injuries on this list came at the WORST times. There’s no good time for an injury, but there were so many derailed pushes, perhaps none more than the megapush of Karrion Kross.
Captain Smokey Spooks and his beautiful clock girlfriend debuted in May, and supermonstered his way to being NXT Champion by August. Unfortunately that title reign would come to an immediate end, because by the time he pinned Keith lee at TakeOver 30, Kross was already injured with a separated shoulder.
Fans who were perplexed by what should have been a megahossfest ending with something of a whimper had their confusion answered when WWE revealed Kross has suffered a separated shoulder.
You can see it happen. Lee is kneeling, Kross runs the ropes and Lee nips up, hits the ropes himself then nails Kross with a clothesline. Kross lands with his full weight on his right shoulder and instantly reaches for it, calling over the referee, who also places a hand to it. Knowing he’s hurt, Kross continues with the match, even taking a f**king spirit bomb, which is not great.
He wins the title, before vacating it the very next week. The next NXT Champion would surely have better luck… right?
5. Kairi Sane (June 1, Raw)
It’s sort of amazing that WWE managed to cut around this as best they did. So Nia Jax had not one but two scary run-ins with Kairi Sane in 2020, ones that might make the pirate princess glad she didn’t stick around in the company for a third.
The first happened on April 20 during a match on Raw where Jax picked Sane up, walked her across the ring and threw her too early into the turnbuckle meaning her neck and head pinged off the turnbuckles. Scary stuff, but thankfully no injury.
Cut to a rematch on June 1, which would end up being cut concerningly short after Jax threw Sane into the steel steps, with Sane suffering a nasty gash in her forehead when it collided with the stairs. Ooft.
Kairi covers her head, turns away from the cameras before being quickly put back in the ring for a hurried legdrop and pinfall to end the match before the blood really started flowing.
According to Dave Meltzer this incident wasn’t Nia’s fault and that Kairi was in control of the fall, but yeah, after a number of botches leading to injuries for Bayley, Zelina Vega, Ember Moon and of course Becky Lynch, fans have been less than forgiving to Jax.
4. Alex Reynolds (Dynamite, October 21)
Christ. During a four-way tag match which saw Young Bucks vs Butcher and the Blade vs Private Party vs 3 and 4 of the Dark Order (Alex Reynolds and John Silver), the handsomest member of the cult took a horrific botch that could have been a lot more serious.
Lying in the middle of the ring, Private Party hit him with an old Hardy Boys special, a combo big splash and leg drop, when Isiah Kassidy overshoots and lands with full force on Reynold’s head.
What happens next looks at first like great selling before the sinking realisation, nope, he’s knocked out cold in the middle of the ring.
The botch has similar DNA to the royal rumble 2003 botch where Edge accidentally landed flush on Chris Nowinski’s head. That botch eventually ended Nowinski’s career and started his hugely important work into examining concussions.
It was a scary moment for AEW, especially during the moments after the injury occured where Reynolds just lies there with other wrestlers moving around him, which is, you know, real dangerous.
He was out for almost a full minute before people start the process of getting him out of the ring and checking on him. Not the scariest moment of AEW this year, we’ll get to that, but pretty close.
3. AJ Styles (Royal Rumble)
Welcome back Edge, oh no you’ve killed AJ Styles! That’s my joking, it was just a bad accident, but god DAMN Styles took a tumble.
So Edge returns, looking like he’s spent the last nine years fighting wolves in the woods and goes on something of a spear spree. Styles takes the last one and as a punctuation mark, sells it with a flip.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t get full-rotation on it and he spikes himself right on his shoulder, separating it, much like Karrion Kross had done.
Immediately realising that he was hurt, AJ Styles got himself eliminated as quickly as he could, before Luke Gallows arrived, in case fans were confused as to why Styles was gone before Luke Gallows could arrive and complete the OC trio.
Styles went on Twitch to stress that the injury wasn’t Edge’s fault and he overdid the sell, leading to him getting hurt. Thankfully Styles recovered in time for Mania, where he proceeded to be literally murdered by the Undertaker.
2. Finn Balor (NXT TakeOver 31)
31 was Finn Balor’s first TakeOver defence of the NXT Championship, which he won after Karrion Kross vacated it due to injury at NXT Takeover 30. Turns out 2020 is a f**king cruel bastard as, yup, not only did Finn Balor suffer a nasty injury, but so did his opponent Kyle O’Reilly.
At this point we should probably burn the NXT Championship at the stake, just to be on the safe side.
During the match – which is BONKERS good btw, ch-ch-ch-ch-check it out – right at the end of a brutal match that saw both men bleeding from the mouth after stiff shots a plenty, Kyle o Reilly hits Balor with a running knee in the corner.
This knee broke Finn balor’s jaw in 2 places. Balor’s eyes go immediately wide with shock, turning and clutching his jaw, before he’s hit with a German suplex and Christ alive that must have hurt.
Balor immediately climbs the turnbuckle and hits Kyle with a Coup de Grace to prematurely end the match.
And even as the bell rings you can see his swollen jaw and the fact that he was still able to do the show respect spot with O’Reilly after the bell, well Finn Balor is just one of the toughest sons of bitches walking the planet.
1. Matt Hardy (2020)
Bad year for Matt Hardy, this. In WWE he kicked off the year having his head kayfabe bashed in by Randy Orton to further his storyline with Edge. Then he left for AEW, only to have his head repeatedly bashed in for the real.
Like, accidents happen, of course, but say what you will about WWE, at least that neck brace was fake. There are two main very bad things that happened to Matt Hardy’s head this year, both involving his feud Sammy Guervara, which started out as hardcore playful and gradually became a snuff film that you just wanted to end.
The first was on the pre-taped episode of Dynamite on August 5 which saw Guevara throwing a chair like a javelin directly into Hardy’s forehead, busting him wide open hardway. The second and much worse incident we all saw happen live, and it was HORRIBLE.
At All Out, in a broken rules match, Guevara and Hardy climbed a lift with tables placed close to it, way too close to it, as when Sammy speared Hardy off the platform, they overshot the tables with Hardy smacking his head on the concrete floor, knocking him out. Awful.
What happened next may be one of, if not the, biggest miscalculations in AEW’s short history. The match was initially called off, but then allowed to continue with staff doctors giving Hardy the all-clear.
After previously being unable to stand, falling down, hitting his head again on the floor, Hardy was allowed to finish a wrestling match, including the closing spot that involved Matt climbing the stage structure, which, like… I don’t know man, how is that anything other than a terrible idea.
Hardy’s wife was rightfully furious at the company and they received a ton of backlash online for the judgment calls of both the doctors and the production team.
Thankfully Hardy was and is okay but just, wrestling doesn’t have to be this. AEW produces some wonderful stuff, but we have never and will never ask them to make wrestling this real.
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