Chelsea Green’s broken orbital bone looked like it came out of nowhere on WWE SmackDown, but now we know exactly what went wrong.
Bryan Alvarez explained on Wrestling Observer Radio that Green was injured during the finish of her tag team match with Tiffany Stratton against Fallon Henley and Lainey Reid. Fatal Influence hit their Rolling Encore finisher, and while everything looked normal on television, Reid came down on Green’s head during the move.
“They did the match and everything was going along as it should, and then at the very end Fatal Influence hit Chelsea with their finish. It looked on TV like everything was fine, but in fact everything was not fine. Lainey fell on Chelsea’s head in doing the move, and Chelsea broke her orbital bone.”
That’s the missing piece Green didn’t reveal when she first confirmed the injury. She told fans she ended up in the emergency room with a broken orbital bone, but there was no clear explanation for what actually caused it.
Now there is. Reid landed on Green’s head during the finish, and the impact was enough to fracture her orbital bone even though the spot didn’t look disastrous in real time. Alvarez said that’s what made the whole thing so nasty — nobody watching would have guessed Green had just suffered a serious injury. There could be more fallout too. Alvarez said he has heard people within wrestling criticize the Rolling Encore itself after Green got hurt.
“It was one of those finishes where it looked like nothing went wrong, but somebody got badly injured.”
“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.”
Green’s timetable is still up in the air, but at least the mystery around the injury is gone. What looked like a routine SmackDown finish ended with Reid landing on Green’s head and the interim WWE Women’s Champion heading to the ER with a broken orbital bone.
Do you think WWE should change Fatal Influence’s finisher after what happened to Chelsea Green, or was this just a freak accident? Let us know what you think in the comments.
