Apollo Crews is injured.
With the Netflix premiere and The Royal Rumble being a big talking point in January, nobody knew that the former Intercontinental Champion was injured. It actually happened during his match against Johnny Gargano on the January 24th episode of Smackdown.
The exact moment of when Crews was injured is unknown, but the Smackdown star hasn’t competed since. He was notably absent during the Royal Rumble weekend, though it’s not been confirmed whether WWE had plans to put Crews in the Royal Rumble match before the injury. The 37-year-old confirmed his injury with a photo detailing his time in the hospital.
Heading into surgery today.
A few weeks ago on SmackDown, I tore my pec—an unfortunate situation. Sometimes, you do everything right, but there are just some things beyond your control. I’m looking forward to the road ahead, attacking it with a positive and unstoppable mindset.
And enjoy my clean shave! It has been a while since I have seen this baby face!
Other than his quick wins over Giovanni Vinci, Crews was mainly used as a jobber on the main roster, which is ironic because he originally went back down to NXT in 2022 to escape his status as a Main Event guy.
“It was weird that nothing was happening [in my career]. It got to the point where it was just like ‘man, I don’t want to be coming here and doing Main Event anymore." Crews told Ryan Satin on his Out of character podcast. "I want to be on the main shows. I want to be one of the guys here that’s a household name, right? I want to be one of those guys. So like, it wasn’t coming. So I made an approach and asked if there was any spot down here essentially for me at NXT and the opportunity came about and it happened. There happened to be a spot available. I was like, ‘Man, I’m 100% for it.’”
He moved up from NXT in early 2023 and Triple H just can’t seem to figure out what to do with Apollo Crews. That’s a shame as many consider Crews to be one of the best wrestlers in the world before he joined WWE in 2014. There seemed to be an attempt to make him a tag team guy by pairing Crews with Baron Corbin, but the latter was released in November 2024.
Hopefully, Crews has a safe and speedy recovery. And when he comes back, let’s pray that Triple H has something that he can really sink his teeth into.