Last night’s episode of NXT ended with an injury angle after Adam Cole attacked Kyle O’Reilly. This seemed like standard pro wrestling fare. But then after the show ended, word quickly got out that O’Reilly was legitimately hurt, and he was being stretchered out of the ringside area.
One attendee’s ringside assessment that O’Reilly suffered a seizure snowballed into a situation that worried a lot of fans and wrestlers, as you can see from the following tweets.
Kyle. Sending all the love.
— ℭ (@DakotaKai_WWE) February 18, 2021
I really hope @KORcombat is ok.
— Renee Paquette (@ReneePaquette) February 18, 2021
O’Reilly
— D.A. Brewer (@DABrewerWWE) February 18, 2021
Get well soon, KOR.
— Jake Clemons (@JakeClemonsWWE) February 18, 2021
In the aftermath of the incident, multiple media outlets reported that it was a work, which actually added to the confusion of the situation. Were some of the above wrestlers in on the work and playing it up on Twitter to enhance the story? Or were they legitimately worried about O’Reilly’s health? Was it a planned storyline that went wrong, and maybe Kyle really was hurt even though it was initially a work?
Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez discussed this confusing story on Wrestling Observer Radio:
Alvarez: They did an injury angle on the NXT show, and a report came out from somebody in the building that he had suffered a seizure. And of course this went all over the internet. As of right now, the story from WWE is that it was part of an angle, and that he’s fine.
Meltzer: I haven’t heard that he’s fine. I just heard that it’s part of an angle.
Alvarez: Well I mean, if it’s part of an angle, then he’s fine. Unless he was actually hurt, in which case, maybe he’s not fine. But if what they’re saying is that it’s part of an angle, that it’s a storyline, then he would be fine.
Meltzer: I guess. I mean, it was part of an angle.
Alvarez: Sure. If you can’t figure this out everybody, we actually don’t know for sure that this is all storyline, because I can tell you that there were people that were in the crowd that thought that he was knocked out. I can tell you that there are people within NXT that thought that he was hurt. And WWE put out, through some other individuals, the story that it was part of an angle.
Meltzer: I did hear it was all a work even at the very beginning...I basically was told that it was a work right away...
Alvarez: But if you watch it on TV, it certainly looked like a work. He was attacked by Adam Cole...
Meltzer: Well obviously that was [a work].
Alvarez: My point is if I had only seen that, I would not have ever thought for one second that Kyle O’Reilly had actually been injured. But then we started hearing from people who believed that Kyle O’Reilly was injured...
Meltzer: It was part of a storyline though. But if he is hurt, it was still part of a storyline, in the sense that it was done as a storyline.
Alvarez: Yes. So if he was hurt, he was hurt in the middle of something where he was supposed to fake get hurt, but he actually got hurt.
Meltzer: Well we don’t know that he got hurt. But he definitely didn’t have a seizure though. 100%. That part of the story we know isn’t true.
It’s still a confusing puzzle to decipher. The bottom line is that Kyle O’Reilly did not suffer a seizure. It appears that many people within NXT didn’t realize this was an angle, so they were worried about his health. There’s at least a chance that he really was hurt while shooting the angle. But unless we hear otherwise, it’s reasonable to assume that O’Reilly is fine, because this was part of a storyline.
What do you make of this Kyle O’Reilly injury angle?