Sami Zayn is out of wrestling action for an estimated 8 months with a double rotator-cuff tear, the WWE Superstar revealed on Thursday.
Kevin Owens’ on-again, off-again partner has begun the surgical-repair process.
“I just underwent surgery for my right shoulder, a.k.a. my good shoulder,” Zayn told WWE.com. “So, I’m out for a little while with that. I guess people don’t know about this injury; I’ve been working with it for some time. I don’t know exactly when I tore it. I think I tore it, or initially injured it, on a Montreal Live Event. Which is ironic because I injured my left shoulder — now somewhat famously — in Montreal in my [“Raw”] debut against John Cena. And at a Live Event this past August wrestling Jinder Mahal, I think I injured it then.”
“But then my left shoulder, a.k.a my bad shoulder, started to act up again as well,” he continued. “That shoulder hasn’t quite been the same since surgery anyway, so I had just kind of gotten used to the fact that that shoulder was the bad one. But it started to get progressively worse, so basically, long story short, it turns out I have two torn rotator cuffs. The left one and the right one are both torn. I just underwent surgery on the right one, and then in about six or seven weeks, I’ll be undergoing surgery on the left one, and hopefully I can come back healthy and happy.”
Surgery No. 1 went “great,” Zayn told the website, though he is “in a considerable amount of pain right now.” Zayn believes he originally hurt his left shoulder back in 2009 in a match against on-screen frienemy Owens.
Zayn believes he’ll be back in time for WrestleMania 35, which is set for April 7, 2019 at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium.