A Doctor Explains How WWE Star Cody Rhodes Ruptured His Pec
When Cody Rhodes showed up to the WWE's Hell in a Cell event and defeated Seth Rollins this week, he was sporting some painful-looking bruising on his chest: the wrestler had suffered a complete pectoral rupture during a weight training session while preparing for the fight.
In a new video on his YouTube channel, sports physician Dr. Brian Sutterer explains exactly what a pec rupture is, and how it will likely have occurred during Rhodes' bench press.
"As your arm lowers, you stretch the pec tendon and you eccentrically load it, meaning the tendon is trying to contract with the muscle while it's being pulled as you descend downward," he says. "Eventually the force becomes too great for the tendon, and in Cody's case, there's already a partial injury, and you get that complete snap or rupture of the tendon coming off of the bone."
Sutterer draws parallels between Rhodes' injury and bodybuilder Ryan Crowley, who sustained a similar pec tear while performing the bench press last year (powerlifter Larry Wheels later uploaded the gruesome footage to Instagram).
"What we're seeing on his skin is all the bruising, the ecchymosis, because of the bleeding that occurs whenever that tendon snaps off the bone," he says, and he goes on to explain that the reason Rhodes' bruising extends all the way down his arm is because the pec tendon inserts out onto the humerus.
But should Rhodes still be in the ring fighting with this serious an injury?
"Everybody wants to know who in the world this doctor was who cleared Rhodes to go out there and wrestle," says Sutterer. "On one hand, when the pec tendon is completely ruptured, you're not necessarily going to make that individual injury any worse when you go out there and wrestle; it's already ruptured, you already know you need an operation... The bigger thing is going to be the pain, the limitations in the function and the range of motion. If this happened recently, he probably hasn't stiffened up enough yet to truly be affected by the range of motion, it's really going to be a pain question."
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