It broke the hearts of millions of fans worldwide when WWE announced that Finn Balor will have to relinquish his WWE Universal Championship on Raw just 24 hours after winning it at Summerslam.
The only possible silver lining for the fans of the Demon King was that it was estimated that he could recover in 4 to 6 months of time which would have set his return just around the time for WWE's annual Royal Rumble event.
A possible return and win at the Rumble would have put the former NXT champion right in the hunt for the Universal championship, allowing him to gain the same amount of momentum he had after his incredible debut on Raw
Unfortunately, now it looks like the former Universal champion would not only be missing the upcoming Royal Rumble but WrestleMania 33 as well.
As we noted before, After Finn underwent a successful surgery to repair his shoulder, WWE Doctor Jeffrey Dugas noted on the official website of the company that his injury was more serve than they originally assumed. He said:
Finn’s injury was pretty severe, more severe than normal. A really high energy injury, it did more damage than a standard shoulder dislocation where you simply tear the labrum.
Now as seen below in the latest video posted by WWE regarding the recovery of the NXT Veteran, Finn Balor himself is explaining that his injury is “a lot more complicated than originally anticipated.
As noted by Inquisitr, this means that the expected recovery time for the former NXT star is slated to be a minimum of 6 months, if not more.
According to this schedule, even if Finn Balor is able to recover from his injury in six months, his return would be marked sometime during the month of February meaning that he would miss the Royal Rumble event.
However, if things go south and Finn is not able to put himself together within 6 months, then it would pretty much mean that the longest reigning NXT champion will eventually miss the whole of the WrestleMania season including the ‘grand daddy of them all’ itself.
It’s worth noticing here that WWE had plans for Kevin Owens to go up against Balor after his SummerSlam win but those plans were nixed after this injury put him out of action.
So if Finn is not able to make it to Royal Rumble but is cleared before WrestleMania, WWE could go on with the original plans and develop a feud between Kevin Owens and his fellow NXT veteran leading to a match between the two at the biggest annual PPV of WWE.
Since John Cena is expected to continue his feud with AJ Styles after he returns, another interesting possibility for Balor would be to go on against the original opponent slated for Cena at WrestleMania 32, The Undertaker.
It would be the perfect set up if Undertaker agrees to a match at WrestleMania and if Finn makes his comeback before the PPV, thus setting up a dream match between the Demon King and the Dead Man at the grandest stage of them all.
