Former WWE personality and booker Jim Cornette recently commented on the Dexter Lumis injury from a recent episode of NXT. In a triple threat match with Finn Balor and Timothy Thatcher, Lumis would suffer from a ‘Osteochondral Lesion of the Talus.’ Or in layman’s terms, an ankle injury.

The injury occurred during the spot where Lumis flipped out of the ring between his opponents for a stare-down. The spot had to be filmed twice and the edit does not actually show Lumis landing from the flip itself.

Jim Cornette would be critical of the ‘stunt,’ mainly because he felt that the “risk-reward ratio” didn’t warrant such a throwaway spot during a televised match. With the injury, Lumis has now been pulled from the NXT Takeover XXX North American Championship ladder match.

“It’s not just me saying ‘f*ck all the new guys and this is stupid'” Cornette began on his Experience podcast. “This is business and this is common sense.”

“I understand guys wanting to do different things to get over. Everybody wants to get over, to get over on TV, get over with the office. Get over with the booker or get over with the writers/creative team and get over with the fans”
Jim Cornette continued. “Everybody wants to get over, and to get over you have to do different things and things that other people don’t do. You have to look impressive and make an impression.”

Cornette would then discuss how performers now need to work ‘smarter, not harder.’ “Get over smarter, not harder. The risk reward ratio of something like that for that spot in an empty arena television match? If he had nailed it and the camera had not cut through the whole thing and you saw he obviously did it? You would have said ‘wow, holy sh*t that was a heck of a flip.'”

“But the whole idea was not for him to wipe out his opponents”
Cornette would continue. “Just a flip and stand in the middle of them to freak them out. And for that? He [Lumis] dove headfirst toward a concrete floor, padded, but he risked blowing out his knees, his ankles, his f*cking crotch whatever you could blow out. Pick your spots!”