Two weeks after refuting internet reports that she was taking time off from WWE along with her husband Seth Rollins after they both lost title matches at Wrestlemania 40, Becky Lynch won the Women’s World Championship.
Lynch won the Women’s Battle Royale on the April 22 episode of RAW to become a singles champion for the 7th time in her career. Last year, she won the NXT Women’s Championship for the first time and held it for almost two months. It’s more than fair to say she, like her husband is a workhorse. I don’t know if Lynch will turn Heel but if Liv Morgan is turning Heel, she doesn’t need to. It would make sense to turn Lynch Heel if Morgan stays a babyface though.
Well, there you have it.
All current title holders except Cody Rhodes are staying on their current brands. For those who don’t know, Rhodes is now officially a part of the Smackdown roster but will presumably continue to appear on both shows for now.
They’re not pictured but NXT Superstars will be a part of the draft. After Bron Breakker had his last NXT match early last month, apparently keeping him and Baron Corbin as a tag team on the main roster is being considered. Noticably not pictured are Alexa Bliss, Carmella and Charlotte Flair. Charlotte’s likely going to be out due to her injury for another 5 to 6 months so it makes sense. Bliss and ‘Mella being left off is real interesting given both are in the process of making their way back from maternity leave. Oddly, Seth Rollins is listed despite obviously being out due to injury for a little while. Jimmy Uso is also expected to be out for a while with an undisclosed injury he’s been working with for some time.
Anywho, I’ll provide draft results for each night a day or two later. Look for the results for Smackdown this coming weekend while RAW’s will come Tuesday or Wednesday.
Valhalla and Erik, who are a married couple IRL are also notably not included in the upcoming draft. For those who might not know, Erik has been out since last summer due to injury. In an interesting move, WWE has been pushing Ivar as a solo superstar and he has been on a roll. Ivar once shared a story from about 10 years ago in which he got injured and his partner Erik competed as a solo competator on the indies. Now the shoe’s on the other foot so to speak.
Erik and Valhalla broke the news Thursday afternoon that they are expecting their second child. Previously competing as Sarah Logan in WWE, she was released by WWE just before finding out about her first pregnancy in the Spring of 2020. She gave birth to their son later that year. She made her WWE return as Valhalla in 2022 but didn’t compete in matches until the Fall of 2023. When her husband was sidelined due to injury, she continued to accompany Ivar to the ring until just Wrestlemania weekend. Now we know why.
Coincidentally, her pregnancy announcement comes a week after her former stablemate now in AEW Ruby Soho (Ruby Riott in WWE) announced her own pregnancy. Both will likely give birth around the same time in November so there’s that. Meanwhile, their third stablemate Liv Morgan continues the hunt for her next title reign in WWE.
Hours after finding out he along with Jinder Mahal and Veer Mahan were among the batch of talent released by WWE, Sanga shared a video via social media in which he pointed out with their release, there are no longer any Indian-born talent in WWE. When you consider WWE spent a good part of the years leading up to 2020 trying to break into the Indian market like they did Saudi Arabia and the UK it’s understandable.
This is also Mahal’s second time being released by WWE. Almost 10 years ago he along with Drew McIntyre were released by WWE. Mahal was later quietly rehired and within 8 months of his return, he became WWE Champion. His becoming WWE Champion when he did left a lot of people scratching their heads largely because there was no build and he hadn’t been in TV since he return much either.
Mahal’s run as WWE Champion was largely forgettable mostly due to poor booking and as he later revealed in interviews, he was the WWE Champion for much longer than had been originally planned. His title run was extended in an effort to help break WWE into the Indian market which The Great Khali was already trying to do from within India.
Most people might not remember this but WWE was preparing to debut several Indian-born superstars who’d been training in 2020 before the Pandemic changed things and ultimately led to all of them being released. Superstar Spectacle was originally planned to be held in India but the Pandemic forced it to be held in the Thunder Dome. A second one was initially planned for 2021 but was quietly cancelled because WWE wasn’t willing to cover the visa costs for the talent to travel to the U.S. for the second year in a row if it wasn’t going to be in front of a live audience.
WWE has clearly pivoted to breaking into the Japanese market directly in the last few years with the returns of Kairi Sane and Iyo Sky in particular as well as signing Giulia. All that said, Sanga did raise one more good point about foreign-born talent who work as Heels in American wrestling promotions often being saddled with “Evil Foreigner” gimmicks.
This was something Mustafa Ali fought with Vince McMahon on and ultimately won though it may have also been why he was always kept out of a singles title win. As an American Muslim of Pakistani heritage, he was very sensitive to making sure he was not perpetuating any stereotypes about his religion or culture in WWE. He has recounted the one time he gave in to the pressure to do that on the indie scene and when he realized what he was doing, he promised himself he would never do it again.
WWE as well as AEW, TNA and other promotions should take heed. Let’s be real, the reason the “Evil Foreigner” gimmick has been a thing for so long is because promotions know some audiences with a lot of racists want it and won’t accept anything else. That doesn’t make it “ok” but this is why there’s always been a “demand” for that kind of thing. I think it’s time for major promotions–especially those on TV– to put a stop to that. That way, they could influence small-time indie promotions who are influenced by them to do the same.
I don’t expect change to happen overnight but change needs to happen sooner than later.
Cameron Grimes–real name Trevor Lee–took to social media Tuesday afteroon to reveal he’d just been notified he has been released by WWE.
The news is quite the shock since unlike prettymuch everyone else who’d been released, Lee was regularly on TV in recent weeks. I do feel he should have been moved on from NXT a year sooner than he actually was. He also should been moved to RAW and not Smackdown where the Bloodline dominates most of the airtime. What makes his release even more heartbreaking is apparently, he spoke to one of the execs backstage at last week’s Smackdown and had been told he wouldn’t have to worry about being released. He likely knew at that time some talent releases were imminent or had been announced internally so it’s fair to say he was either lied to, whoever he spoke to was lied to or both.
Former WWE Supersar Matt “The Indy God” Cardona, who was released in 2020 has made it a point to reach out to people released by WWE via social media to encourage them and let them know they can have a career in the business after WWE. He would know: Cardona is the most decorated Indie wrestler in the business right now.
Cardona is the husband of current WWE Superstar Chelsea Green who herself had also been released by WWE in 2020 but was rehired almost two years later. She has since gone on to become a 3-time Women’s Tag Team Champion with three different women. We’ll have to wait and see if this is the year she captures a singles title for the first time.
I do think some of the recent talent releases will return to WWE at some point. Some always do. Nia Jax, Karrion Kross, AOP and Shawn Spears are a few other recent examples. The most famous example is probably still Drew McIntyre. He was a jobber when he was released by WWE almost 10 years ago. Right after he left, he became red-hot on the indies so fast, Vince McMahon flew to his house to offer him a new WWE contract.
The reason I put McIntyre’s return ahead of Cody Rhodes’ return is because the turnaround from when he went from “The Chosen One” when his first run in WWE started to jobber so fast before he was eventually released to then make a name for himself on the indies and get his former employer’s attention, come back in and make a huge splash. Cody left to reinvent himself, co-founded AEW and then left to finish what he started in WWE.
Of those who were just released I do hope Lee, Xia Li and Von Wagner return to WWE down the road. In the mean time, I also hope they stay in the business. All three would greatly benefit from working with or training with an industry vet. It’s up to them though.
With the announcement of the Women’s North American Championship earlier this month, The Undertaker recently added to the growing number of voices that have been calling for a Women’s Intercontinental Championship for over 5 years now.
With the Raw and Smackdown Women’s Championships phased out last year, now’s a good time to introduce a mid-tier Women’s Championship. Plus it’s pretty odd for a Women’s North American Championship to be announced before a RAW/Smackdown equivalent has even been done.
The Women’s Tag Titles were introduced first on the main roster before the now defunct NXT versions were introduced. Two years ago, the NXT Women’s Tag Team Championships were folded into the main roster versions. It would make sense given by last summer, almost all of the Women’s Tag Teams that were on NXT were now on the main roster.
I can only hope a Women’s Intercontinental Championship will be announced or even better revealed soon. It would be quite the swerve to reveal the winner of the upcoming Queen of the Ring will be the inaugural Women’s Intercontinental Champion so we’ll see.
WWE Hall of Famer, former governor and military vet Jessie “The Body” Ventura recently revealed he and WWE are on speaking terms in the aftermath of Vince McMahon’s departure.
For those who might not know, Ventura was fired from WWE almost 40 years ago for trying to unionize the locker room. I won’t pretend to know what exactly went down but it goes withouy saying Ventura’s wrestling career basically ended at Vince’s hands. Many years later, Ventura would run a grassroots election and become governor of Minnesota. Although he ran as a Republican, unlike Glen Jacobs (Kane in WWE) he had the benefit of being a military vet which he learned hard into to become governor for a term.
After his tenure as governor ended, Ventura got into using his status as politician to get into doing some reality TV shows in the 2000s. Things took a weird turn when he started tabbling in anti-government conspiracy theories. He has a YouTube channel and podcast where he mostly talks about such things. That’s likely the real reason WWE has largely distanced itself from him over the last two decades in particular.
I’m fairly sure any business Ventura and WWE do together will likely not involve on-screen storylines. Making him a part of other WWE-related programming would make a whole lot of sense though. I think of when Bruno Sammartino was welcomed back 10 years ago. After leaving WWE in disgust just before the first Wrestlemania, Sammartino was able to reconcile with WWE and Vince McMahon before he passed away in 2018. Sammartino was pleasantly surprised when he returned to WWE to not only find out fans knew him or remembered him but were happy to see him back. Like Ric Flair, Sammartino was something of a pop culture icon decades after his last match.
I could see something like that with Ventura if things work out that way.
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