Big Cass’ Injury Could Not Have Come At A Worse Time

You would need a heart of stone to not feel sorry for Big Cass.

The seven footer may well have suffered a career setback that could last an indeterminate amount of time after suffering an incredibly nasty-looking injury on the August 21^st broadcast of RAW.

In the midst of a street fight with his former friend Enzo Amore, the big New Yorker went to drop his Empire Elbow, but instead his right leg gave way, twisting and collapsing at a rather nasty angle.

The big man’s frustration was evident. Footage taken by a member of the audience that night showed Cass doubled over after breaking down in tears at the foot of the entrance ramp. It proved to be an ignominious end to a push and programme with Big Show and Enzo that failed to capture the imagination from day one.

Not that things had been much better the night before the injury. Beseiged by chants of “BORING!”, the bout between Cass and Big Show (with Enzo above the ring in a shark cage because why not) at SummerSlam sought to redefine the idea of sluggishness.

With the feud already uninteresting, detached and lumbering to a conclusion nobody particularly cared about, the SummerSlam match was a nail in the coffin.

Events represent a very real and worrying decline for Big Cass, who appeared to thrive as the muscle to Enzo’s hyperactivity. Remember when Cass was actually in the Four Way Elimination Match for the Universal Championship in August 2016?

The reasons for Cass’s drop in popularity, presence and prospects can be squarely aimed at WWE’s writers, who not only jumped the gun in splitting up his tag team, but failed to capitalise on any of his attributes, as well as failing to realise that perhaps he wasn’t ready for this push after all.

The reason both Amore and Cass have floundered since their breakup is that they both needed one another to accentuate their positives and hide their negatives.

Amore, a whirling dervish who can put an audience in the palm of his hands, lacked power and height. Cass, who doesn’t lack power and height, wasn’t so hot on the mic, nor does he exactly exude charisma. As the Pet Shop Boys once sang: “You’ve got the brains, I’ve got the brawn…let’s make lots of money”.

And indeed, that’s what the pair actually did. They turned over merch quicker than a collision between lorries full of t-shirts. While their eventual breakup was inevitable, as all things must come to an end, it shows just how itchy the trigger fingers are of some in WWE creative to do things for their own sake.

Lending some credence to the idea of a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world causing all kinds of havoc thousands of miles away, the fallout from their split has had some rather wild consequences.

In the immediate aftermath, the wrestling news wires buzzed with stories of both Amore and Cass dousing themselves in petrol and subjecting themselves to some of that sweet locker room heat.

Amore was allegedly attracting ire for his party lifestyle, while Cass supposedly attracted opprobrium for his pro-Trump political leanings. The latter rumour seems a little far-fetched, given that Linda McMahon is part of Trump’s administration, Vince is a long time friend and the man himself is actually in the WWE Hall of Fame. What a world we live in, ladies and gents.

The heat, the poor feud, bad matches and now this: a knee injury to a seven-footer who was never the most nimble and steady to begin with.

If you want an example of how an injury can put the skids on a career and push, then you don’t need to look too far back in time to see what happened to Finn Bálor.

Pushed to the moon after his promotion from NXT, the Irishman pinned Roman Reigns clean in the middle of the ring and two weeks later went on to become to the inaugural Universal Champion. He was forced to relinquish it the next night due to injury and since his return he has found it difficult to reach the same heights as last summer. Maybe that title is cursed after all.

For Big Cass, the omens don’t look good. Far from being as revered as Bálor, far from the full-fledged monster he could be and potentially far from recovery, one can only hope the Queens native is as up for the fight as his in-ring persona was. Otherwise it’s going to be a long, lonely road back from whence he came.