With Mercedes Moné making waves in Japan with STARDOM and New Japan Pro-Wrestling, many have wondered what the future holds for her former WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship-winning partner Trinity Fatu (formerly known as Naomi in WWE).
PWInsider Elite is reporting that Trinity Fatu will debut for Impact Wrestling during this weekend’s taping in Cicero, Illinois, just across the border from Chicago. Impact had been teasing a big surprise for the tapings at Cicero Stadium, and it appears that surprise is Fatu. Not set to be just a one-off surprise appearance, the report states that this will mark the start of the former “SmackDown” Women’s Champion’s tenure with the promotion. There is no information on the length of her deal with the promotion.
The debut will mark her first appearance on a wrestling program since she and Moné walked out of WWE in May 2022, abandoning their women’s tag team titles out of frustration over the creative direction of the women’s tag division. There had been talk of Fatu joining her husband Jimmy Uso in the popular Bloodline faction, but nothing has come of those rumors. Fatu confirmed late last month on Instagram that she was completely finished with WWE.
Fatu’s partner Mercedes Moné debuted for New Japan Pro-Wrestling in January, also wrestling for NJPW’s sister promotion STARDOM as the IWGP Women’s Champion. Moné recently lost her title and has demanded a rematch in Long Beach, California at NJPW Resurgence. She recently signed an extension with the companies, which are both owned by Bushiroad.
AEW shocked the wrestling world on Wednesday night with Roderick Strong’s surprise debut on “Dynamite” in Sunrise, Florida. He had requested his WWE release last May, hadn’t been seen on WWE programming since August, and as of mid-March, was reportedly still under contract. So for him to show up on “Dynamite” to run in and save Adam Cole from the Jericho Appreciation Society was something almost no one saw coming. Very quickly, Fightful Select reported some details to try to help give context to what was a very left-field debut.
The most recent information that Fightful had was that the AEW talents they spoke to were “pleasantly surprised” that Strong had signed. On the WWE side, the newest information was that 2K Games had been told not to include Strong in the “WWE 2K23” video game, that other WWE talent had never been updated on his status, and he had not been at the WWE Performance Center “in quite some time” even though he was fully cleared to wrestle. The report also noted that Strong’s WWE run started its downward slide when Paul “Triple H” Levesque lost power in “NXT,” as he was behind Strong’s push as the center of a revitalized cruiserweight division.
Strong has been wrestling since 2000, breaking into the business when he was 16 years old after years of training under Jim Neidhart. After initially getting on the map for his work in the IPW promotion in Florida, he made a name for himself in Ring of Honor, where he was a mainstay for over a decade before signing with WWE in 2016.
According to PWInsider Elite and then confirmed by Fightful, WWE Superstar Braun Strowman is currently out of action due to a concussion.
As of this writing, it is not known how long Strowman will be out of action.
Fightful notes that Strowman was scheduled for house shows on April 22 and 23, but was pulled.
The concussion happened during the April 21 episode of SmackDown when Strowman had teamed up with Ricochet against the Viking Raiders.
Strowman noted on Twitter that he “misjudged things” with the spot that saw him toss Ricochet into the ring, trying to hit the Viking Raiders in the April 21 match. He then fell to the apron after he left the ring.
The show has aired on the company’s YouTube channel and FITE TV since it premiered in March 2021.
This week’s episode was billed as a “best of” show with no new matches airing. It was FITE that noted the series was coming to an end with the following description for it:
“The Special and final episode of Elevation – it’s Best of Elevation airing on FITE! The episode is throwing it back to some of the best matches that have graced our Monday nights over the years!”
AEW has yet to comment on the future of the program. You can watch the episode here:
Impact Wrestling will be holding a set of TV tapings at Cicero Stadium in Chicago, IL this Friday night. Earlier today, the company took to Twitter to tease a “MAJOR SURPRISE” that will be taking place at the tapings. They wrote,
“There will be a MAJOR SURPRISE THIS FRIDAY at #SpringSlugfest in Cicero Stadium in Chicago!
Get tickets and be there to see it in person”
As of this writing, there is no word on what the surprise will be.
The annual WWE NXT Spring Breakin’ themed event goes down tonight at 8/7c on the USA Network from the Capitol Wrestling Center inside the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida.
According to F4WOnline, although Vince McMahon was not at tonight’s Raw in Chicago, he has still made major changes to Monday’s show.
PWInsider said they were told there had been some major changes to Monday’s Raw script, which were done remotely at Vince McMahon’s request.
PWInsider in their Elite subscription section said that McMahon changed finishes on several matches. The report also notes the match between The Street Profits and Cedric Alexander and Shelton Benjamin was added to the show after McMahon’s changes.
Fightful reported that Piper Niven and Candice LeRae were scheduled for a backstage segment, then a match, but that The Street Profits vs. Cedric Alexander and Shelton Benjamin was done instead.
PWInsider Elite and Fightconcluded by noting It was also reported that “a number of segments” with the female talents were cut from the show. That would include a backstage segment that was planned with Candice LeRae and Piper Niven. There reportedly was another segment cut that involved Adam Pearce, Sonya Deville, and other female talent. The decision to cut that segment was reportedly made so that they could spend more time on setting up the six-woman tag team match with Damage CTRL. It is interesting that LeRae and Niven were cut because they were also cut at the last minute on the Raw after Mania. Vince McMahon was backstage and running that show.
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