All Elite Wrestling has been plagued with the injury bug since the company’s inception. Following its inaugural AEW Double or Nothing event, a show that went off the air with the debuting Jon Moxley attacking Kenny Omega, the planned Moxley vs. Omega match was delayed from AEW All Out that August due to Moxley suffering a staph infection. As the years went on, top stars like CM Punk, Bryan Danielson, Adam Cole, Thunder Rosa, Jamie Hayter and more all went down with injuries while they were in the middle of main event storylines or even as they were reigning with championships.
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The same poor timing with injuries affected Kyle O’Reilly. The violent artist joined AEW in December 2021, reuniting with his stablemates from NXT’s Undisputed Era. O’Reilly, Adam Cole and Bobby Fish supersized their stable by bringing in the Young Bucks, forming the short-lived “Undisputed Elite.”
By the following summer, the trio would be completely separated. Fish exited AEW after his contract expired. Cole went down with a career-threatening concussion. O’Reilly took time off to get an overdue neck surgery and has yet to make a full recovery.
Kyle O’Reilly’s Return Window Potentially Revealed
AEW fans might be seeing ringside air guitar again as soon as next spring.
Taking to Instagram, Kyle O’Reilly shared AEW’s announcement of its Canadian tour in 2024. As a British Columbia native, O’Reilly is hopeful that he will be cleared when AEW returns to his home country.
“I might be a wrestler again by this time,” O’Reilly captioned the image, adding a fingers crossed emoji.
O’Reilly’s last AEW match came on the June 8th, 2022 edition of AEW Dynamite where he battled Jon Moxley in a losing effort. That match was contested to decide the AEW representative to fight for the Interim AEW World Championship against a New Japan competitor at the first AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door event.
While there were concerns that O’Reilly’s neck surgery would bring an end to his career, the 36-year-old remains laser focused on reaching that squared circle oasis.
“The wrestling ring has felt like an oasis in the desert for me these last 12 months,” O’Reilly wrote this past October. “I know if I keep walking I’ll eventually reach it but I don’t know if it’ll just disappear when I get there like a mirage. The good news is I can see the oasis now, it’s definitely not a mirage.”
Stay tuned to ComicBook.com for updates on Kyle O’Reilly’s recovery.
