WWE: Drew McIntyre on WWE Future, More on Natayla vs. Rhea Ripley Match at RAW, More News

Jul 5, 2023

Drew McIntyre Comments on His Recent WWE Return & Future of His WWE Career

As noted before, this past Saturday’s Money in the Bank 2023 event in London, England featured Drew McIntyre making his surprise return to WWE. This was McIntyre’s first appearance in WWE since this past April’s WrestleMania 39 event due to injury and creative-related issues.

A recent episode of the WWE The Bump show had McIntyre as the guest. One of the topics discussed included McIntyre’s thoughts about his recent return to WWE and the future of his career in the company.

“I just want to apologize for everybody, that I missed my dates, I missed the towns. It’s not like me, unless there’s a reason. Obviously, the rumor and innuendo is out there. What’s going on with Drew McIntyre? What’s going on with the future? The future doesn’t matter. What matters is the present, and presently, Drew McIntyre is back. If you’re heading to a WWE show and Drew McIntyre’s there, you know you’re gonna get 110%, and finally, I’m chasing that big moment with a title in front of live fans. So let’s make that happen finally.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

Backstage Reaction to Natayla vs. Rhea Ripley Match at This Past Monday’s RAW Show

This past Monday’s WWE RAW show in Baltimore, Maryland featured a WWE Women’s World Championship match between Natayla and champion Rhea Ripley, which was won by Ripley.

Fightful Select reported that several high level WWE official spoken to stated that they were very happy with the gritty nature of the match. One WWE official spoken to reportedly stated that “it should be the first thing we watch when traveling back from Money in the Bank.”

It was reported that both Natayla and Ripley took a real beating during their match and both were very happy over how the match went down and the positive reactions to it both backstage and online. It was also reported that management in attendance were also happy with the match.

Natayla recently reflected on Twitter about her match with Ripley at this past Monday’s RAW show. Natayla stated “Tonight was personal. It was an apology to myself for putting up with what I didn’t deserve. Thank you so much to everyone who still believes in me, even when I didn’t always believe in myself. It truly means the world to me. Sometimes people forget, until I get the chance to remind them. I was made in The Dungeon. I can take anyone to their limit on any night, because that’s what top level competitors do. Now line up the rest and let me loose on them too.“

WWE News & Notes

This past Saturday’s Money in the Bank 2023 event in London, England featured a surprise appearance by John Cena, who gave a promo teasing the idea of a future WrestleMania event taking place in London. The Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer reported that his sources stated that the current belief within the United Kingdom is that WWE is actually serious about the idea but would likely only do so if they were paid by the local government to hold an event there.

The BBC reported that several members of the United Kingdom’s Parliament recently gave their support to John Cena’s recent proposal for WWE to hold a WrestleMania event in London in the future.

Fightful Select reported that their sources stated that former WWE talent Tyler Breeze is technically still under a contract with WWE despite being released in June of 2021. It was reported that Breeze has been under a deal specifically for WWE’s UpUpDownDown YouTube gaming channel for quite some time with the only known terms being him not being allowed to appear on any AEW programming.

TMZ reported that Logan Paul recently got engaged to his girlfriend and model Nina Agdal this past Sunday in Lake Como, Italy.

Seth Rollins recently announced on Twitter that he will be making an appearance at this year’s ESPY Awards show, which takes place on July 12th in Los Angeles, California.

Drew Gulak recently announced that he will be opening a new wrestling school called Catchpoint this August in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Gulak also announced that himself, “Hot Sauce” Tracy Williams, and Wheeler Yuta will be the head trainers for this new upcoming wrestling school.

As noted before, Major League Wrestling’s original antitrust lawsuit against WWE was dismissed this past February and had filed a new amended lawsuit this past March. PWInsider’s Mike Johnson reported that WWE had filed a motion on June 30th requesting an extension of time to officially respond to MLW’s amended lawsuit based on recent court records. In the filing, WWE reportedly stated that they “recently retained new counsel and requires adequate time to investigate the allegations.” Johnson reported that the court had granted WWE’s motion and gave them a new date of August 14th to officially respond.

Fightful Select reported that their sources stated that the recent reports and rumors of WWE had plans to add Charlotte Flair into the Women’s Money in the Bank match as a last minute replacement for Zelina Vega were not true. Those same sources reportedly stated that WWE officials never had any plans to do so and instead Flair was always planned to be involved in the Asuka and Bianca Belair feud well before she even made her return this past June. It was also reported that the reason why Flair was added to that feud was due to WWE’s current plans to re-establish Asuka by having two top female talent chasing her for the WWE Women’s title.

In a recent episode of the Kliq This: The Kevin Nash Podcast, WWE Hall of Famer and co-host Kevin Nash gave his thoughts on why he currently feels that LA Knight’s character is just a rip-off of The Rock. Nash stated “Am the only one that sees an absolute ripoff of The Rock? To the point where he cut the promo on fucking Logan Paul or whatever the fuck is name is. He said, ‘Yeah, stick it,’ the only thing he didn’t do was turn that motherfucker sideways. What, does everybody have amnesia? There’s nothing original…’Oh, man, his promo.’ His promos…’Finally, LA Knight has come back as a white guy.’ If you don’t put that Money in the Bank in Paul’s hands so you can, the rest of the year, say, ‘Oh, fuck, yeah, but the wildcard is, will Logan Paul be there?’ If you don’t get some mileage out of that, then uncle. I don’t know this guy, LA Knight. I don’t know him, but I’ll tell you one thing, I got a text message from him, I’m just gonna read what it says. ‘Hey Nash, I know you don’t know me. I’ve got an idea of this character. He’s called the Scorpion King. What do you think?’ This is bullshit, okay. Rock was the Scorpion King. Then he said he’s in talks with Disney. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)