Chelsea Green won a world championship six days ago. She spent Friday night in an emergency room.
Green confirmed on Instagram that she suffered a broken orbital bone during Friday’s SmackDown in Philadelphia, where she and Tiffany Stratton challenged Fallon Henley and Lainey Reid for the Women’s Tag Team Championship.
I did get injured last night. Stuff happens. It’s live television. It’s wrestling. It’s an occupational hazard. I ended up in the emergency room and I have a broken orbital bone. It looks amazing, all things considered. It feels awful, but looks pretty amazing.
She has been through this before and says it does not feel the same.
I have no idea what that means for me. Usually, you guys have seen me play into every single injury. But this feels different, obviously. It feels frustrating. I’m upset. I feel like if I didn’t have bad luck I’d have no luck at all.
I just need to take a little bit more time to process and to heal from the head trauma that is going on right now. We’ll see what happens. We’re just going to take it day by day.
Bryan Alvarez reported the injury before Green confirmed it, and said on Wrestling Observer Radio that the finishing sequence is drawing criticism inside the business.
I have heard people saying within wrestling that this is not a good finish anyway, so we’ll see if they end up getting a new finish. But it was one of those finishes where it looked like nothing went wrong, but somebody got badly injured.
Alvarez said Reid came down on Green’s head while the move was being executed, and that nothing looked wrong on television.
Fatal Influence closed the match with two moves in quick succession. Jacy Jayne caught Green with the Rolling Encore behind the referee’s back, then Henley and Reid hit their double team finisher, the Fatal Flaw, for the pin. Reid is part of the second of those.
The timing is difficult for WWE. Green won the Interim WWE Women’s Championship in a ladder match at SummerSlam on August 2, a title created because Rhea Ripley is out following knee surgery. She has given no timetable and WWE has not commented on her status.
She also broke her ankle in February during an Elimination Chamber qualifier and spent months in a walking boot before returning.
