This situation comes only a couple of months after Big E’s rather anticlimactic loss of the WWE Title to Brock Lesnar at January’s Day 1 PPV and being surreptitiously shunted off to SmackDown with nary a word about any sort of rematch for the championship. The injury to his neck, while requiring no surgery, means at least a few months of recovery and him missing out on WrestleMania 38. This also leaves Kofi Kingston, Big E’s partner and New Day stablemate, on his own as New Day’s third member, 2021 “King of the Ring” winner Xavier Woods, is also out nursing a calf injury he suffered at the end of last year.

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The injury to Big E’s neck occurred during a tag match on the March 11 episode of SmackDown emanating from the BJCC Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama, involving him and his partner Kingston versus Sheamus and his “protégé” Ridge Holland. The neck injury came when Holland loaded up Big E for a belly-to-belly suplex, but failed to complete the arc on the throw, causing Big E to land directly on his head and seemingly go limp and unconscious on impact. The match was rushed to a finish which saw Sheamus pin Kingston after a Brogue Kick, immediately after which Big E was loaded onto a stretcher and taken out of the arena. During this time being escorted out, Big E had regained enough consciousness to give a thumbs up to the live audience, assuring them he would be okay for the most part. Big E was then taken to a nearby Birmingham hospital, where after regaining full consciousness and undergoing several medical tests, he was determined by doctors to have indeed suffered a broken neck.

Big E indicated in a later medical update that he specifically fractured his C1 and C6 vertebrae, but suffered no damage to his spinal cord and will not be requiring surgery and can still operate all his ligaments. Even with that good news in mind, though, medical experts, including WWE’s own Dr. David Cho, indicate that while Big E may not require surgery, the fracturing of the C1, the topmost cervical vertebrae often associated with death or paralysis, is one that often never “heals completely”, meaning that Big E’s wrestling career could be over sooner than later if it in fact does not heal properly.

It is a real shame to see this happen to Big E, as the “Powerhouse of Positivity” has more than lived up to his moniker, both as an entertaining top champion for WWE in the past year and a source of light and enjoyment backstage among WWE’s staff and his wrestling peers, with many of them pushing back the kayfabe curtain to console Big E in person and on social media and give him best wishes on a speedy recovery.

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Source: 411Mania, Ettore “Big E” Ewen, Brian Sutterer MD