Kofi Kingston will be away from the WWE for several weeks. (WWE.com)
The New Day’s Kofi Kingston has sustained an ankle injury and will need to undergo surgery, the WWE announced on Monday. So was Kingston legitimately injured? Or are viewers being worked here?
The part of this that seems to be real is that Kingston really does need time off for health reasons. Big E recently posted a photo of Kofi Kingston in the hospital presumably about to undergo surgery, writing, “Don’t go into the light!” This was posted several days before the WWE made this announcement that Kingston was injured.
Don’t go into the light!
However, what’s unclear is whether Kingston actually was injured during last week’s show at all. The official story from WWE.com is that Kingston broke his ankle after the match between The New Day and The Revival on April 3rd.
“During the attack by The Revival, Kofi injured his right ankle and heard a crack, and was unable to put weight on his leg following the attack,” a WWE physician told WWE.com. “Further evaluation and an MRI revealed that the attack had caused fragments of bone to break off the ankle bone (talus), requiring arthroscopic surgery to remove the bone chips from the damaged joint.”
This part about Kofi being injured during The Revival’s attack is obviously not true. This was not a situation like Samoa Joe’s attack on Seth Rollins from January, as when looking back on that tape, there is a moment when Rollins clearly hurts his leg in a way that was not intended. On the other hand, during the April 3rd Raw segment, Dash Wilder jumps off the top rope and lands on Kingston’s leg, but he doesn’t seem to even make contact with Kingston at all upon landing.
It’s theoretically possible that Kingston really was injured at a different point in the match, but if that was the case, it would be incredibly coincidental that the segment also happened to have a scripted ending in which Kingston is “attacked” by The Revival and seemingly hurt.
What seems much more likely is that Kingston really needs some time off in order to undergo surgery, and so his segment with The Revival last week served as a way to write him off television while also building up The Revival as a threatening team.
According to the WWE.com, Kofi Kingston will be gone for “several weeks,” which would mean he will likely miss the Raw-branded pay-per-view, though we shouldn’t necessarily take that figure as gospel considering the WWE has been known to exaggerate the length of a superstar’s expected absence for story purposes.
Already, The Revival is playing up their injury of Kofi Kingston on social media, even having shirts made that say “We broke Kofi’s ankle.”