WWE Chris Jericho

The immediate creative reaction to Edge suffering a torn Achilles tendon at the live event this past Friday was to figure out a way to get the belts on Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase. Over the weekend, those plans changed as they were looking to have Edge make one final appearance on television by giving his Unified WWE Tag Team Championship belt to Dolph Ziggler, and proceed from there. However, it was noted that given how things work in the company, that plan would likely change a dozen times between now and this Monday’s television taping in Orlando, when the final decision would likely be announced. At this point, they no longer have plans to make Ziggler Jericho’s tag team partner.

At one point over the weekend, there was talk about keeping the Colons together, editing out Carlito’s turn on Primo on this past Monday’s taped airing of Raw. However, that idea is off the board because they ended up airing the turn on Raw.

Creative was looking at footage of the SmackDown show taped on 7/1 in Bakersfield, California to see if there was a spot they could point to on this week’s episode they could use for the injury. The hope was to find a spot during Edge’s run-in during the Chris Jericho vs. Rey Mysterio match, since that would be his last physical appearance. It would appear that they found nothing because on Tuesday, the WWE website acknowledged the injury and the surgery, and listed it as happening in his match with Jeff Hardy match from a leapfrog spot as opposed to trying to create a storyline reason for it.

Edge had been working hurt even before his ladder match with Hardy at last month’s Extreme Rules pay-per-view. He noted during a recent radio interview promoting the television taping in Fresno that when he was younger, he was able to recover quickly from those type of matches quickly. He then said he was hurting just walking for a week after the match.

Next week’s RAW is already shaping up to be a blockbuster show. Here’s what we know is going down so far:

Ric Flair will be returning to WWE next week on RAW to address Chris Jericho and his disrespectful remarks from earlier. A graphic appeared during this week’s broadcast with a picture of Flair in a gold robe advertising that he will be there live next week. The announcement came after Chris Jericho cut a promo on Mickey Rourke, Roddy Piper, and Ric Flair saying they were all washed up. He singled out Flair, saying that he is now doing autograph signings in high school gyms and interviews for shady low budget websites.

So the Nature Boy is coming out of retirement for at least one more beat down. Stay tuned for the full details.