What is the story about?
Welcome
to the weekly Rumor Look Back, where we look at the rumors from six months ago and see which played out as originally stated. Let’s jump right in it.
- According to WrestleVotes Radio, there is significant interest in WWE for Chris Jericho to return to the company after his AEW contract expires. One source expects a deal to be made between Jericho and WWE when that time comes.
- Nothing on that front yet.
- “Several sources” told PW Insider that Will Ospreay’s comments on Dynamite about needing neck surgery are “100% legitimate.” The AEW star is “absolutely looking at neck surgery in the near future.”
- He’s still out but they’re starting to play videos hyping his return. I bet he’s back by if not winning the title at their next London show. (1/1)
- Fightful Select says Swerve Strickland has been working through a torn meniscus that he first suffered in 2019 while training at the WWE Performance Center. The Jacksonville Jaguars medical staff is helping him deal with the injury. It’s not clear if or when Swerve will take time off to have surgery to repair it.
- He missed about four months after Forbidden Door.
- Elsewhere on the AEW injury front, Wrestling Observer Radio’s Bryan Alvarez heard that Konosuke Takeshita was “knocked batty” during his G1 tournament semifinal match against Zack Sabre Jr. He mentioned that Takeshita “didn’t remember the match…didn’t remember anything.” Alvarez doesn’t know how Konosuke was cleared to wrestle in the G1 final or at this week’s AEW Collision taping.
- Sounds like maybe he shouldn’t have been? Maybe he didn’t have a concussion but “knocked batty” sounds like a euphemism for one.
- Bodyslam.net claims that WWE has been planning a feud between the Wyatt Sicks and the MFTs, and it’s expected to begin soon.
- It’s still going on. And it probably will be when we’re doing a Look Back six months from now. (1/1)
- Post Wrestling says NXT’s No Mercy PLE will take place on Sept. 27 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
- Accurate on date and location. (2/2)
- NXT is expected to expand its PLE schedule, per Insider. The current plan is to do eight such events per year.
- We’ll wait to see how many there is this year.
- The Wrestling Observer Newsletter says there are people in AEW who are under the belief that Chris Jericho is leaving the promotion when his contract expires at the end of the year, and that he will “start in WWE as a Royal Rumble surprise” in Saudi Arabia.
- He was not at the Royal Rumble. We’ll wait and see if he returns to WWE at all (which still feels likely). (0/1)
- However, Fightful Select says many people in WWE have “no clue” if Jericho’s AEW contract is actually ticking down right now, or if it’s frozen and time can be added to the end of it.
- Current rumor is it is frozen.
- The Observer notes that WWE had the following three title matches internally listed for Clash in Paris as of August 18: Becky Lynch vs. Nikki Bella, Cody Rhodes vs. Drew McIntyre, and Solo Sikoa vs. Sami Zayn.
- Only Becky vs. Nikki, which I don’t even remember, happened on this show. (1/3)
- Per WON, AEW has planned for a while to book a tag team title match of FTR vs. Adam Copeland & Christian Cage on Sept. 20 at All Out in Toronto. However, Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin “weren’t up for losing to FTR.”
- It’s hard, if not impossible, to prove a “refuse to lose” rumor but there’s enough smoke around AEW talent doing at different times so that I start to believe it. Tony Khan needs to put his foot down on things like that if that is the case.
- AEW considered two ways to get around that problem in order to put the tag belts on FTR. The first idea was to “do a three-way,” and the other idea was to “have Benjamin do an injury angle.”
- Brodido won the tag titles at Forbidden Door the next day. They didn’t lose those titles to FTR for another couple months.
- Fightful Select says there are people in AEW who are concerned about Will Ospreay’s neck and hoping he wouldn’t wrestle at Forbidden Door. It sounds like Ospreay went into July’s All In event knowing that he had to take time off soon, which changed some of AEW’s plans.
- He may be back sooner than later.
- On his podcast, Eric Bischoff said there are plans for Real American Freestyle wrestling to launch a live, two-hour weekly show starting in early 2026.
- Doesn’t seem that way yet. (0/1)
- F4WOnline’s Dave Meltzer indicates that one reason why Saturday Night’s Main Event will now air exclusively on Peacock is because “The NBC numbers are far lower for the show than anyone expected.”
- That’s not surprising. I don’t know why they expected them to do gangbusters numbers. Wrestling gets the same numbers no matter where it is.
- Dave Meltzer said on Wrestling Observer Radio that the WWE archive will likely end up on the ESPN+ service by the end of the year, or at least that’s the talk internally.
- It’s on Netflix. (0/1)
- PW Insider says Vince McMahon had a big party to celebrate his 80th birthday in New York and names like John Cena, Sheamus, R-Truth, The Undertaker, and Bruce Prichard were all in attendance.
- I hope he didn’t drive anyone there.
- They also say there has been talk about the Raja Jackson incident at KNOKX Pro Wrestling within WWE, considering the promotion is affiliated via the WWE ID program. There could be an effort to create some distance between them going forward.
- Sounds like it went that way.
- Fightful Select notes that talk of a third team being added to the Forbidden Door tag title match to get the belts off the Hurt Syndicate goes back about a month ago, so it wasn’t necessarily done that way in response to any request. Plus, they said they “haven’t heard that Hurt Syndicate outright rejected losing to anyone.”
- We can split the rumors. (1/2)
- They also say Kota Ibushi was genuinely shocked to be added to the Lights Out Steel Cage match.
- That was kind of a forgettable one for a Lights Out match.
- Fightful says AEW is preparing for Swerve Strickland to take time off to get surgery following Forbidden Door.
- He missed about four months after surgery. (1/1)
- The Observer notes that it’s possible the Stephanie Vaquer vs. TBD women’s world title match will be held off for the big Wrestlepalooza show.
- It happened at Clash in Paris – Vaquer vs. Iyo Sky. (0/1)
- WWE has now officially cut ties with Rikishi’s Knokx Pro following Saturday’s Raja Jackson/Syko Stu incident, says PW Insider. They have removed all references to the promotion on online material.
- That makes sense after that incident.
- Swerve Strickland told fans at his stage show in London that he will be having knee surgery on Wednesday.
- I’m glad he finally got it fixed.
- Netflix is now listing Raw as starting at 7 pm ET starting on Sept. 15, though it’s unclear why that’s the case.
- There were two NFL games that Monday, though one did start at 7. Maybe they figured it’d be better to go against the earliest part?
- FOX 13 in Salt Lake City posted a news article stating the city in Utah will host the Halloween edition of SmackDown and the Nov. 1 Saturday Night’s Main Event show but later deleted the article.
- It was right so I don’t know why they deleted it.
- Fightful notes NXT PLE’s will continue to air on Peacock and while there has been talk of their rights being up for grabs there’s no movement on that front currently.
- It looks like that’s still the case for NXT. (1/1)
- Bryan Alvarez said on Wrestling Observer Live that WWE is embarrassed by the situation with Becky Lynch using Ozzy Osbourne’s death in a promo on Raw this week, and there has been talk of doing a public apology for it.
- I didn’t feel it that bad. She didn’t besmirch him or anything. But it was a sensitive time and best leave that be. It’s a different era when it comes to heels getting heat.
- According to PW Insider, Vince McMahon is expected back in court on Oct. 16 for his reckless driving charge from last month.
- A video from that driving incident recently came out.
- Per BodySlam.net, Orange Cassidy has been cleared and he’ll be returning to AEW television sooner rather than later. He’s simply waiting on creative plans.
- He returned in September. (1/1)
- On his Marking Out with MVP & Dwayne Swayze podcast, MVP said Ricochet was originally going to join the Hurt Syndicate before plans ultimately changed.
- It seemed like they teased him and then they kind of punked him. But it worked out as Ric is doing well for himself.
- PW Insider notes that Ice Williams and Jordan Oasis have been released by WWE ID.
- They’ll likely continue to sign and release folks at that level of their system.
- There was no official WWE involvement in Vince McMahon’s 80th birthday party, and prominent figures like Nick Khan, Triple H, and Stephanie McMahon didn’t attend. That per Fightful Select, which also said a WWE exec told invited talent it was their choice whether to attend or not. Their report also stressed “there have been no discussions regarding McMahon contributing in a creative capacity” and that “there is no desire to bring him back.”
- I wonder when Hunter & Stephanie’s relationship is like with Vince. Clearly they were on the opposite side of things when they tried to get him out the first time before he used the sale to come marching back. But when he was busted going 100 MPH on the highway, he told the office he was speeding to his granddaughter’s birthday so he has some relationship with them. (Shane only has boys.)
- A Fightful source that attended told them that “McMahon looked 80… more frail, walked slower, and looked his age in a manner that he hadn’t in decades.”
- Time catches up with us all.
- AEW’s rights to Hook’s old Action Bronson entrance music actually expired around the beginning of this year, according to Fightful Select. There were some issues between Bronson and the company over the rapper’s comments about his AEW appearances around that same time, but once those were “smoothed over” the decision to go in a new direction with Hook’s theme had already been made.
- I forgot that Action Bronson had an appearance on the show at one point.
- He prefaced it as “reckless speculation”, but Sean Ross Sapp wrote in a Fightful Select Q&A that fan theories Jack Perry was the unrevealed “doctor” in Luchasaurus’ return video “would certainly match up with” what he’s heard about Perry’s own return to AEW. Sapp added that he didn’t get a response when he “outright asked an AEW source if it was Perry”, but with the caveat “most people in the industry just avoid answering things instead of lying.”
- It was accurate. Reckless speculation was right. (1/1)
- A fun “what if?”… on Impaulsive, Tyrese Halliburton said that if he hadn’t gotten hurt in the NBA Finals and his Indiana Pacers had won the title, he & Triple H had discussed a “very, very” loose plan to have him walk a heel John Cena to the ring in New York City with the NBA championship trophy. Halliburton said that when he tore his Achilles in Game 7 against eventual champs Oklahoma City, “I was like, bro… the first… things I thought about were like this game, next season, John Cena.”
- Damn.
- On Monday, Ricochet filed a trademark on the term “Bald”. He reposted a report on his filing with: “The fact that there are people who scan the trademark registry to see if there’s anything new… is giving Stalker.”
- I really don’t know much about trademark law because just the word bald seems like it’d be hard to trademark.
- Wrestling Observer Radio’s Dave Meltzer says WWE has talked about adding Randy Orton vs. Drew McIntyre to the Clash in Paris PLE this Sunday. The match is definitely happening before McIntyre challenges WWE Champion Cody Rhodes, at the very least.
- It happened before Cody/Drew, but not at Clash in Paris. (1/2)
- WrestleVotes heard that many people in WWE want to see the duo of Chelsea Green and Ethan Page appear together on SmackDown soon, due to their impressive chemistry on NXT television. Some people think this is a great way to “quickly establish Page as a key player” on the main roster.
- That didn’t really happen.
- According to WrestleVotes Radio, the upcoming episodes of WWE Raw on Sept. 15, Sept. 22, and Sept. 29 will all have a start time of 7 pm ET. The idea is to see how the show performs on Netflix with minimal head-to-head time against the NFL’s Monday Night Football.
- That’s correct. (1/1)
- During an interview on The Masters of Wrestling, Douglas Malo indicated that KnokX Pro has lost a lot of students in the aftermath of Raja Jackson’s violent assault on Syko Stu. Rikishi is apparently going to “overhaul everything” with the promotion.
- Yeah, that makes sense.
- Sources told Fightful Select that Ian Riccaboni is “beloved” backstage in AEW, with many wrestlers hoping that he’ll “become a more permanent fixture” on the shows. It’s expected that he will be featured regularly during AEW’s current residency in the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia.
- I believe he doesn’t like to travel for shows weekly, but he’s a good announcer.
- For whatever it’s worth, Andrew Zarian heard “there will be an announcement regarding AEW PPVs on HBO Max in the coming weeks.”
- The announcement was the following week. It wasn’t as much of a discount to get them on Max as I was hoping. It’s $10 less, which is nice if you already have Max but I was hoping for something like half off but that was probably foolish to think. (1/1)
- According to PW Insider, a lot of talent in WWE believe that Chris Jericho “has made overtures to see whether WWE has interest in him” when his AEW contract expires.
- He talked a lot of shit when he was the early face of AEW but so did CM Punk for a decade and that didn’t stop him from coming back. As long as someone thinks that a reunion will make money or be a good look, they’ll forgive past transgressions. And Jericho was doing what he had to pumping up AEW early on. It’s just funny when folks talk that shit and then end up going to the company they talked it about.
- Insider also mentioned there were “several TKO/WWE employees let go from the TV production and social media divisions” on Thursday.
- That is always crummy.
- Cody Rhodes will be done filming his scenes for the Street Fighter movie by Sept. 20’s Wrestlepalooza PLE. That comes from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, which adds that Roman Reigns does not have the same filming dates as Rhodes, but there will be “some crossover.”
- That movie looks weird.
- The Observer says there was “a period when all but a few of [Vince] McMahon’s closest friends had nothing to do with him.” However, “in a lot of the cases it was because of their wives being appalled from the lawsuit and not wanting their husbands to have an association.”
- An understandable reaction from the wives.
- Per WON, at one point “people in WWE were told not to have any contact” with Vince, but that’s clearly over with.
- I guess they figure he’s less personal non grata than he was.
- After Danger Pro Wrestling announced that it booked Raja Jackson for an upcoming appearance, Wrestling Observer Live’s Bryan Alvarez was told that “apparently the building put the ixnay on it…I think the building basically said he’s not welcome.”
- Also should be personal non grata.
This week: 13/21 – 62%
August 2025: 50/75 – 67%
Overall: 6,151/10,498 – 58.6%
Have a great week, everyone!
