WWE: Update on Rhea Ripley’s Return from Injury, LA Knight on Being Doubtful of How WWE’s Partnership with TNA Benefits Them, More News

Jul 16, 2024

Update on Rhea Ripley’s WWE Return & Injury Status

As noted before, Rhea Ripley made her surprise return to WWE on the July 8th WWE RAW show in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Prior to her return, Ripley had been absent from WWE since this past April due to a shoulder injury.

PWInsider’s Mike Johnson reported that his sources stated that the reason why Ripley did not have any physical interactions with Liv Morgan nor anyone else since her return is due to her still not being medically cleared for any in-ring return nor physicality.

Those spoken to reportedly stated that Ripley is currently not expected to wrestle until next month’s SummerSlam 2024 event.

Johnson reported that WWE officials had originally considered plans for Ripley to return at their SummerSlam 2024 event or the RAW show the day after but made the decision for her return to be done sooner instead to setup her match against Morgan for SummerSlam. Johnson reported that the reason for the change was due to Ripley had told WWE officials that she believed she would be good to go in the ring in time for SummerSlam.

LA Knight Comments on WWE’s Working Relationship with TNA & Not Knowing How It Benefits WWE

A recent episode of the Battleground Podcast featured LA Knight as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Knight’s thoughts about WWE’s current working partnership with TNA Wrestling and being doubtful of how it will benefit WWE.

“I have no answer to that. I don’t know. I don’t know what the benefit is for us, if I’m honest. I really don’t care because it’s not my decision to make, not my thing to do. I’m sure it gives great benefit to TNA. Who knows? Maybe there’s a deal worked out where there’s access to the library or something like that because we do at least have a few guys who have run through that system. Maybe there’s something there. Who knows? I don’t know. I think that all remains to be seen, but I mean of course, it’s definitely gonna get people talking because this is something that I think is pretty well unprecedented at this point. So to see that happen, to hear about that, all of a sudden, a lot more eyes are going over there, like, ‘Wait a minute, they’re doing what? Who’s coming in? TNA’s working with WWE? That’s insane.’ So I would imagine that’s probably maybe giving us at least a little bit of a boost.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

WWE News & Notes

Monday’s WWE RAW show in Dayton, Ohio featured the debut of a new entrance theme song for Sheamus for his match against Bronson Reed at the event.

WWE recently announced that Sami Zayn will be holding a new “Sami Zayn & Friends Do” comedy show on August 2nd in Cleveland, Ohio.

WWE CCO Paul “Triple H” Levesque recently announced on Twitter that “Dead End Road” and “Liar” by Jelly Roll are the official songs for this year’s SummerSlam 2024 event.

As noted before, WWE is current scheduled to be taping two SmackDown shows this Friday in Omaha, Nebraska. PWInsider’s Mike Johnson reported that his sources stated that the reason why WWE will be taping two SmackDown shows that night is due to travel and logistics-related issued involving their tour of Japan next week.

In a recent interview with the Maggie & Perloff radio show, AEW CEO Tony Khan gave his thoughts about John Cena being on the Mount Rushmore of wrestling for the modern era. Khan stated “He would definitely be somebody anybody would have to consider, certainly, especially of the modern era. For me, a lot of the people on my Mount Rushmore are probably people I grew up on. Not only being a fan of, but have gotten to work with later in life. Sting, to me, is up there. It’s a lot of guys I grew up on my Mount Rushmore. Ricky ‘The Dragon’ Steamboat and Bret Hart and Steve Austin. I’d have to think about Ric Flair. A lot of great options for that. John Cena is one of the best wrestlers and certainly one of the greatest of this modern era, without a doubt.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

In a recent interview with the Insight with Chris Van Vliet podcast, Cody Rhodes stated that his entrance robe is not based on the character of Homelander. Rhodes stated “With all the love I have for The Boys and his performance as Homelander, the entire cast, and their production is first class., what a production. The robe is not based on it. The robe is based on military dress uniforms. It’s the little bit of scales, the gold are on my bigger robe that has the eagles and of course, the blonde hair and I think the AEW run where people thought I’m pretending to be a good guy but I’m actually a bad guy, which maybe it was what was happening? I think that’s where it really became is he’s gonna go full Homelander? Truthfully, Homelander the character is a terrible human being.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

As noted before, AJ Styles wrestled at this past Saturday’s Destination 2024 event for Pro Wrestling NOAH in Tokyo, Japan. In a recent interview with Tokyo Sports, Styles gave his thoughts about the current working partnership between WWE and NOAH. Styles stated “It’s still early days, and I’m sure we’ll have to make adjustments in the future, but for my part, I’d like to see more players come and go between the two organizations. It would be good if it wasn’t just WWE wrestlers coming to NOAH, but NOAH wrestlers coming to WWE. NOAH’s wrestlers going to WWE allows them to learn about the environment in the United States, while WWE Superstars can also learn about the culture of professional wrestling in Japan. I think it would be good to have young wrestlers, especially. My experience in Japan is important, and I am where I am today because of my experience in Japan. I would like to say to WWE wrestlers, ‘If you want to be respected, you should go to Japan and gain experience there.” (English translation via Fightful.com)

In a recent interview with Rock 95 Barrie, Chelsea Green gave her thoughts about the experience of being in WWE while her husband Matt Cardona is active on the indies scene and her main goal of having Cardona return to WWE to be together and an amazing storyline. Green stated “It’s very hard, but I also feel like just marriage is hard, so we just have different problems than two people who work desk jobs have. But at the end of the day, if you want to make something work, you’ll always make it work. A lot of people don’t realize, for most of our career, we were totally separate. I was all over the place on the indies and at TNA, and he was always at WWE. So for the first four years of our relationship, that’s what we were used to, and then me being released, him being released, that was new for us. That was a challenge. Being together 24/7, it’s not natural, to be with somebody, to travel, to work, to live, everything with them. So we really had to adjust and figure out our styles on the road and how to mesh them and how to work together because I’ll tell you what, two wrestlers who are singles competitors or two wrestlers who are, one a male, one a female, coming together, does not just mesh. It doesn’t matter if you love each other. That does not just mesh. You have to find common ground in your characters and your work in the ring. So that took us a good year to get into the swing of things, and then of course, as we hit our stride, I came back to WWE, and he is on the independent scene absolutely crushing it, and we are back to figuring out a new dynamic because we also never had this one. We never had Chelsea in WWE and Matt on the indies. So that is new as well. I just feel like our relationship has gone through the craziest ups and downs, and we are just clinging on for dear life and figuring it out as we go. But of course, our end goal is to be in WWE together and have an amazing storyline and do some mixed tag matches together. That would be amazing.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

WWE announced two new matches for the card of next week’s WWE RAW show on July 22nd in Green Bay, Wisconsin: