Earlier today, WWE officially announced two suspensions on the grounds of wellness policy violations. Both Robert Roode and Primo Colon have been named. They are therefore going to be sitting at home without pay for the next 30 days.
This is fairly significant, given that it’s the first wellness policy suspension – atleast among those that have been made public – since October of 2016. Paige was the last person to be suspended, over three years ago. That it not only happened out of the blue after all this time but also happened to two guys at once makes me wonder if there was some sort of recent rule change made.
For Primo, aside from missing a paycheck, this doesn’t change a whole lot. He and his cousin Epico Colon have not wrestled for the company since a couple of dark matches back in February. The last time they worked on television was the Survivor Series 2018 Kickoff show in a Twenty Man Survivor Series Tag Elimination match, of which they were on the winning side. The Colons have recently popped up in the family-owned Puerto Rican promotion the World Wrestling Council, which combined with their disappearance made many believe that they had quietly left the WWE. They have stated otherwise though, and if nothing else, this suspension serves to prove that.
Robert Roode, funnily, was just written off of television two weeks ago.
On the SmackDown before last, Roode incited the anger of Roman Reigns, and ended up being speared through a barricade with a ton of debris dumped atop him. He was then carted out during a commercial break, signifying serious injury.
It’s a little curious to say the least that they had already taken steps to explain his absence a week before this came to light. One might be forgiven for thinking that they already knew he was about to be suspended.
This is unfortunate regardless of circumstance, as Roode has quietly made something of a resurgence this year. After donning a mustache and regaining his old heel name of “Robert” – because apparently you have to be a real jackass to go by Robert instead of Bobby – he teamed up with Dolph Ziggler, a tandem that actually defeated Seth Rollins and Braun Strowman to become Raw Tag Team Champions. After that ran it’s course, they moved over to SmackDown to become henchmen of King Corbin for vaguely explained reasons.
While the both of them were more or less playing the blockade role, being people you had to go through if you wanted to get to Corbin, it was still undoubtedly a better position than he was in at the start of the year, and has allowed him to be involved in higher level angles and work top of the card talent.
This suspension may well put this role in jeopardy, given how quickly things can change. This probably depends on the nature of the violation, which WWE have not clarified for either man, as per standard procedure. But if they aren’t too mad at him, it might lead to a Rumble entry return, which is always a pretty cool thing to have.
This marks the first suspension for both men.
