Logan Paul’s WWE return is further off than he has been suggesting, and Michael Hayes put a stop to the bit backstage.
Paul has been out since May 23, when he suffered a complete triceps tear at Saturday Night’s Main Event while defending the WWE World Tag Team Championship alongside Austin Theory against The Street Profits. He finished the match, but part of the tendon had pulled from the bone and surgery followed. He and Theory vacated the titles. Michael Cole announced the injury on the May 25 episode of Raw, and the original projection was six months.
Paul has spent the months since insisting he is ahead of that schedule. In a July vlog he showed off 60 to 70 degrees of movement, said he no longer needed his arm brace, and embraced the idea that he was three months ahead, joking that he heals like Wolverine. In a vlog late last month he described himself as “semi-cleared,” telling people backstage at Raw that he had been given the go-ahead to throw clotheslines and that he had passed that along to Bruce Prichard.
In his latest vlog, Paul kept the bit going backstage until Hayes shut it down. Paul had already been tipped off that Hayes was telling people not to take his version at face value, and went to find him.
“You’re not. You’re not cleared until at least November,” Hayes told him. “This came from Bruce and Paul.”
Hayes was referring to Prichard and Paul Levesque, and made clear the timeline was not his own read on it. Paul, frustrated, pushed back on what authority either had to weigh in on his triceps specifically. Hayes said neither of them claimed to, and that they had gone to the medical staff.
Paul later spoke with doctors and Levesque backstage. Dr. Jeffrey Dugas, WWE’s associate medical director, has been handling the injury and had seen Paul at an earlier checkup. In this conversation, the doctor drew a line between how Paul feels and where the injury actually is, telling him that from the neck up he is ready to be cleared but the biology in the elbow is not, that it would be months before he could do everything his style requires, and that the risk of coming back early outweighs the benefit.
The number the doctor gave was six months, with five and a half framed as the concession rather than the baseline.
Paul appeared to accept it by the end of the conversation.
“I’m picking up what you’re putting down,” Paul said. “We can all agree five months, five and a half months and we’ll be back here.”
Five and a half months from May 23 lands around November 8, and six months lands November 23, which is why Hayes’s “at least November” fits rather than contradicts what the doctor said. The two figures have been running alongside each other since the injury, with Paul consistently citing the shorter end and WWE staff citing the longer one.
There is still no confirmed date for Paul’s in-ring return, and WWE has not announced one. He has remained on television throughout the absence in a non-wrestling capacity, keeping the on-screen thread alive without needing clearance.
Paul’s vlogs have been the primary source of information on his own recovery for four months, and this is the first time that account has been publicly corrected by someone inside the company while the cameras were still running.
