Should Seth Rollins Stop Using the Buckle Bomb?

Two of Seth Rollins’ opponents have been injured as a result of his ‘Buckle Bomb’. While Rollins is a safe worker, is the move itself dangerous? Should Rollins remove it from his repertoire?

Finn Balor tore his labrum during his match with Seth Rollins at SummerSlam for the WWE Universal Championship. The injury occurred when Rollins used his ‘Buckle Bomb’ signature move outside and hurled Balor into the barricade.

This is the second instance that the maneuver in question has injured an opponent. The first was a freak accident involving Sting at Night of Champions 2015, where he legitimately suffered a stinger during his WWE World Heavyweight Championship match against Seth Rollins. The match would prove to be Sting’s last as the injury he sustained would ultimately force him to retire from in-ring competition.

Now Finn Balor is the second person to fall victim to the move. He is expected to miss at least six months, maybe even longer, depending on his rehab, which would put Balor’s Wrestlemania 33 aspirations in jeopardy. Should Seth Rollins remove the Buckle Bomb altogether from his repertoire?

Recently, Rollins has come under scrutiny for being labeled ‘unsafe’. Of his most vocal dissenters, Bret Hart condemned Rollins for injuring John Cena, where he broke Cena’s nose with a high knee to the face. Accidents happen in wrestling, and certainly, Rollins did not seek out to purposely injure Cena. Rollins is generally regarded to be a safe worker. That said, numbers do not lie and Balor is the third person in the span of a year to have been directly injured by Rollins during a match, two of which were through his Buckle Bomb. Rollins injuring Balor, after having done the same to both Sting and John Cena, will almost certainly have Bret Hart revisit and reiterate his harsh criticisms of Rollins’ work being ‘reckless’.

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While wrestlers can be safe, sometimes, it’s the moves themselves that are dangerous. The Buckle Bomb has injured Sting and Finn Balor. Initially, it was presumed that the damage Sting suffered was amplified simply through his much older body being beat up and weaker over the course of his career. However, the same move injured a much younger, healthier, Finn Balor, arguably in his prime.

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Perhaps Rollins may have to look into removing the Buckle Bomb. Rollins is an incredible wrestler, with a plethora of moves in his arsenal that he has amassed over the years. Certainly, he can dig one up and replace the Buckle Bomb. Ironically, Rollins’ original finishing move, the curb stomp, was banned because it looked simple enough to imitate, and therefore easy for kids to do, despite it being a completely safe technique when done properly by a trained professional wrestler such as Rollins.

The Buckle Bomb is a much more complex move, and won’t be as easy for children to pull off. That said, given its recent track record, it is also not as safe as Rollins’ curb stomp. With the investments WWE made in both Sting and Finn Balor, perhaps they may have to look into the Buckle Bomb to further prevent more of their top stars from suffering the same fate, since in all likelihood, they’ll all have to work with Rollins at some point.

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What do you think? It’s established that Rollins is a safe worker, but is the Buckle Bomb itself a dangerous move? Should WWE look into getting Rollins to get rid of it from his extensive move list? Or are the situations regarding Sting and Finn Balor just unfortunate freak accidents involving the same maneuver? Are Sting and Balor’s injuries too small of a sample size to effectively say the Buckle Bomb should be banned?

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