Austin Aries Out Until Early 2017

Autin Aries has quickly carved out a space for himself on the talented NXT roster, as he just debuted on the brand in March. Unfortunately, that momentum swing has experienced a stall thanks to a match with Shinsuke Nakamura.

At a recent house show, Aries was involved in a tag match with Shinsuke. Towards the end of their bout, Aries charged at Shinsuke for a punch, and he met Aries with a stiff kick to the face. Aries grabbed his face soon after, but many attributed it to a good selling job. Unfortunately, it turned out to be all too real. You can watch a clip of the match in the tweet below.

Aries shared a picture of his eye the next day, and it was far from pretty. It was severely swollen shut, and rather ghastly to look at. It wasn’t known at the time if he would require surgery, but unfortunately (via PWInsider) that will be the case. He’s suffered a large orbital fracture and will undergo surgery this week in Birmingham, Alabama.

That will put the talented superstar out of commission until at least the first quarter of 2017, which is unfortunate since he had really been catching on since his heel turn. Aries was originally introduced as a babyface, as fans of Ring of Honor and TNA were well aware of his past accomplishments, but it didn’t take long for him to embrace his new heel persona, and since then he’s gotten over with the NXT crowd.

We wish Aries a speedy recovery.