WWE Goes Off Air With Champion On Stretcher

WWE

WWE NXT has seemingly begun to tell a compelling real life story through a new ‘accident’ on television involving Ridge Holland.

The show featured main roster star Ridge Holland appearing earlier in the show, interrupting WWE NXT Champion Ilja Dragunov’s in-ring moment to proclaim he was back in the brand.

Mentioning that he seemingly has been chronically involved in ‘accidents’ and ‘injuries’, he was hoping for a new start in NXT.

Further more, Ridge was specifically chasing the ‘Redemption of Ridge’ in WWE NXT, hoping to start with ‘the measuring stick’ of the brand, the current champion Ilja Dragunov.

However when their main event match came around, there wouldn’t be a conclusive winner.

Instead in an interesting angle, Ilja Dragunov was involved in an ‘accident’ that appeared to threaten an ‘injury’ in the storyline as after a move, the champ went down.

Grasping at his neck and even holding fingers in a relatively unnatural position for times on camera for dramatic impact, Dragunov acted the scene quite well, his writhing and moaning clearly concerning to fans in the Performance Center given their shocked faces.

Ridge Holland for his part was emotional as well, yelling at a referee “why always me?”

Atypical for real injuries, the show came to a halt and fixed on the scene of the medical staff at ringside loading Dragunov onto the stretcher.

In a detail that would be very odd if this were a real injury, referees took pause to drape the NXT Championship belt over the champ’s waist before he was stretchered away.

The show went off air with the scene of Ilja Dragunov being wheeled towards a waiting ambulance as commentary was silent throughout the concern for injury.

Ilja Dragunov is set to defend his NXT Championship at WWE NXT New Years Evil although card may be subject to change given the developments from tonight’s show.

As the injury angle closed the show, no update on the status of the New Years Evil title defense against Trick Williams has been provided by WWE.

You can keep up with all the latest news from around NXT by clicking this link. 

The match between between @UNBESIEGBAR_ZAR and @RidgeWWE has been called off due to an injury sustained by Dragunov.

Sending well wishes to the #WWENXT Champion 🙏 pic.twitter.com/Zg5BAcskXu

— WWE (@WWE) December 20, 2023

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• Ilja Dragunov
• Ridge Holland
• nxt
• wwe

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