With the possible exception of Kevin Owens returning and maybe Chad Gable’s long-awaited Intercontinental Championship win, no moment during SummerSlam popped the crowd harder than Chelsea Green winning the ladder match for the WWE Women’s Championship. The popular midcard performer has been doing the most with whatever screentime she’s gotten for years, and it was an absolute joy to see her get paid back with an unexpected World Championship. Unfortunately, the run we’ve all been waiting to see is now in serious jeopardy.
Green partnered with BFF Tiffany Stratton on SmackDown for an impromptu tag team match against Fatal Influence on Friday, less than a week after her big win, but not everything went to plan. During one of the sequences, Green broke her orbital bone. Rumors started swirling on Saturday that something was wrong, and she later got on Instagram to confirm the sad news herself. Here’s a portion of her quote…
I was trying to keep this kind of private, but the internet knows everything so I thought I’d come on here and clear things up. 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.
Ordinarily, you’d assume WWE would strip her of the title and crown someone new, as they recently did with Rhea Ripley who had to have surgery on her knee, but the case of Chelsea Green is a little more complicated. She’s just as much of a personality and a comedic character than she is an in-ring performer. She’s been injured in the past and continued to appear on television, often leaning into whatever is going on for comedic effect with elaborate costumes and even a mask.
A broken orbital bone usually takes one to two months to heal but sometimes takes up to three months for a performer to be back and ready to take full contact. I would certainly expect WWE to work around the injury for a month, maybe even for six weeks, but if she’s not going to be able to wrestle for the full three months, Triple H, Bruce Prichard and the other writers are going to have to make a big decision. Do you strip her of the title and put the belt on someone else, or do you allow her to work through the injury and carry a storyline forward that doesn’t involve major physical contact?
I think a lot of it depends on what WWE was originally planning to do with her championship reign. There’s a world in which they were planning to do something along the lines of what we got from The Miz a few years ago, where he humorously ran from Bobby Lashley for a few weeks before he was ultimately forced to face him and lost the title. He was basically just a transitional champion that provided a few weeks of hilarious storylines.
Then again, there’s another world in which WWE was planning to use Green’s win to elevate her character and try to get the audience to take her more seriously. To use The Miz as an example, he had another title run earlier in his career that we were meant to take much more seriously; so, he was booked differently and held the belt for a longer period of time (and even beat John Cena at WrestleMania). Maybe that was the plan for Chelsea?
Only the key WWE decision-makers know what the plan actually was; so, it’ll be interesting to see how they choose to pivot. Personally, I’d love to see them find creative ways to keep the belt on Chelsea for awhile. She doesn’t need to be dropping in-ring bangers to be entertaining, but if the plan was always for her to drop it in the coming weeks to Nia Jax (who confronted her after Friday’s match) or someone else, then I have to think they’ll just strip her of the title.
WWE fans have collectively been frustrated with the lack of buzzy storylines for the last year or so, but in defense of Triple H and the writing staff, the number of injuries has been crazy. Huge stars like Seth Rollins, Rhea Ripley, Kevin Owens, Stephanie Vaquer, Randy Orton, both Bella Twins, Logan Paul, Bronson Reed and more have spent months or longer on the sidelines. That’s obviously led to so many long-term stories getting changed. Who knows how we would all feel about creative if some of those plans had come to fruition and delivered?
Now Chelsea Green is joining the list. It’s really sad to see as a proud PatriHot, but at least she got her moment at SummerSlam. When wrestling fans look back on people’s careers, it’s often those big, splashy moments that stand out, and unexpectedly winning a World Championship at SummerSlam is about as good as it gets.
