As seen on this week’s episode of WWE SmackDown, AJ Styles made his big return to WWE television.
While working a match, he suffered an injury. Carmelo Hayes went over in the bout while Styles limped to the back. WWE later announced he had a mid-foot ligament sprain. Later in the show, WWE showed Styles being evaluated by the medical team and leaving the arena on crutches. This felt like an injury angle to many fans.
Styles had been away from television since he replaced Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes at the Clash at the Castle event in June. Throughout his hiatus, it was said that Styles was healthy and just waiting on creative.
Coming out of the show, Fightful Select reported this was a storyline angle, and Styles is fine. However, Dave Meltzer reported in the daily update on F4Wonline.com that Styles “injury on Friday was legit and not storyline. He’s getting an MRI done to see the severity of it.”
Fightful has now confirmed Styles is injured.
People in WWE claimed this to me today regarding AJ Styles
"The flip where he sold the knee was to be a work. The move where he landed on the knee was legit"
I don't have much of a follow up besides that but hopefully we see AJ soon
— Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com (@SeanRossSapp) October 7, 2024
The word internally is that he's injured. We will follow up
— Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com (@SeanRossSapp) October 7, 2024
You can see footage of the moment below:
Yeah AJ Styles is injured for real #Smackdown pic.twitter.com/tSlgquArHg
— Ahmed/The Ears/IG: BigBizTheGod 🇸🇴 (@big_business_) October 5, 2024
