Details On Lars Sullivan’s WWE Return

Lars Sullivan is back, and already being pushed on the Smackdown brand.

Sullivan returned on the October 9 edition of Smackdown, and was later drafted to the show. He’d been sidelined since May of last year, and it was a winding road. As Fightful Select reported the night of his return, there was a lot of uncertainty from all directions about when he’d come back.

When Lars Sullivan went down with a knee injury last year, the company originally had him with a tentative return date of June 2020. However, we’d been told several times that Sullivan himself expected to be back much sooner, as he’d been through knee operations in the past. As it turns out, things were much worse than expected.

Though Sullivan posted a rehab video in December, he was obviously nowhere near returning, and we’re told the recovery had been an uphill battle. Those that we’ve spoke to within WWE have indicated that Sullivan ended up having to get both knees fixed, and the outlook went from roughly a year out of action to 16-18 months.

Originally, WWE had major plans for Lars Sullivan. There was heat on him over the racial comments he made prior to his signing, but not on the other controversies that had emerged earlier this year.

This article first appeared on our premium service, Fightful Select. Subscribe to get exclusive news every day, and a half-dozen weekly podcasts. It also appeared in our Fightful Wrestling Weekly newsletter, free on Fightful.