WWE: Lillian Garcia On Her WWE Ring Announcing Return, Braun Strowman Groin Injury Update, More News

Oct 22, 2024

Lillian Garcia Comments on Maker Her Tin Announcing Return to WWE

As noted before, Monday’s WWE RAW show in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania featured Lillian Garcia making her return to WWE and becoming the new ring announcer for their WWE RAW brand following Samantha Irvin’s departure.

Following the show, Garcia reflected on Instagram about her return to WWE and thanked everyone for their suport of her. Garcia also thanked Irvin and wished her well on her music career.

“Oh my gosh, guys. Did that just happen? Did I just really go back to the WWE after being gone for like eight years? I mean, I’ve popped in every now and then, but it’s been eight years since I was the full-time announcer there. And my goodness, when my music hit and I got introduced, the cheers and the applause and the roar that you gave me tonight — thank you. Thank you for that, because I was nervous. I was so nervous. I could even tell when I started announcing that I was nervous, but it is all worth it. It’s all worth taking a risk and a gamble and just being excited and just coming back. Just seeing everybody, like between also the WWE Superstars, my friends, and reuniting with the crew — I don’t know where this is all going, but I’m excited and I am strapping on my seatbelt for that.
But Sam, I do want to tell you, I think you’re an extraordinary talent. You’re unbelievable. And I know it could not have been easy to walk away from here, but I wish you all the success in your music career,” she said. “I know you’re going to kill it. You’re going to kill it. Ok, but WWE Universe, I look forward to seeing you. I look forward to signing your autographs and to high-fiving and all of that. All right, I love you. I’m back. I’m back home.”

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Transcript h/t: F4WOnline.com

Braun Strowman Groin Injury Status Update

As noted before, Braun Strowman has been out of action for WWE since the end of this past September due to a groin injury he suffered during his Last Monster Standing match against Bronson Reed on the September 30th WWE RAW show.

In a recent interview with the Schmo, Strowman provided an update on the recovery status from his groin injury.

“They call me the monster of all monsters of a reason [laughs]. It’s unfortunate, but we know we’re not signing up for water polo or ballet. Things happen in our sport and the show goes on. You have to suck it up and get ‘er done. I’ve been off the last couple of weeks and rehabbing. I fly back to Orlando to our facility, get some more rehab this week, next week we’re in Hershey, PA and then we head to Saudi Arabia.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

WWE News & Notes

WWE held one dark match following Monday’s WWE RAW show in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This was an Undisputed WWE Championship Philly Street Fight match of Jacob Fatu vs. Cody Rhodes (c), which was won by Rhodes.

PWInsider’s Mike Johnson reported that his sources stated that WWE officials within the Performance Center recently have held talks regarding potential plans for The Undertaker to make an appearance at next week’s post-Halloween Havoc 2024 NXT show on October 28th. Johnson reported that it is currently not known what The Undertaker exactly would be doing on the show.

PWInsider’s Mike Johnson also reported that his sources stated that Shinsuke Nakamura is currently expected to make an appearance at this Friday’s double SmackDown tapings in Brooklyn, New York.

WWE recently released two new videos on their WWE Vault channel on YouTube. The first new video was a 3-on-5 Handicap TLC match of The Shield (Seth Rollins & Dean Ambrose) & Kurt Angle vs. Braun Strowman, Kane, The Miz, & The Bar (Sheamus & Cesaro) from WWE TLC 2017. The second new video was the full broadcast of WCW Halloween Havoc 1998 that was live streamed on the channel this past Sunday.

Scarlett Bordeaux recently announced on Twitter that a new season of WWE’s Chamber of Horrors digital series will be premiering on Thursday, October 14th.

In a recent episode of The Hall of Fame with Booker T & Brad Gilmore podcast, co-host Booker T gave his thoughts about him wanting to help indies talent Zilla Fatu get signed to WWE. Booker T stated “Speaking of Zilla Fatu, I feel like I need to say something about Zilla Fatu. Because when my name is attached, I have to say something. Zilla is one of my students. He started with me at Reality of Wrestling over a year ago. Of course, him and I, we had our differences, and he left, came back. One thing about this business, you gotta grow, and when you’re a young man, sometimes you gotta…go through those bumps in the road in order to feel like, ‘Man, I wish it could be a whole lot smoother.’ Of course, Zilla had an incident with GCW. I’m not sure exactly what the full details are. My thing is this, we concentrate on Reality of Wrestling, and I cannot think about anything other than trying to get that young man, Zilla, because of his talent, get him to the next level, and the next level for me, for Zilla is the WWE. That’s his landing zone, that’s his safe zone, the WWE, with his family. I really believe that. One thing about this business, you’re gonna need people that’s gonna be watching your back because you are gonna make mistakes when you’re young. If everybody just turns their back on you, I don’t know, that’s on them. But for me, this young man, he has nothing but talent. Has he made some mistakes? Of course, we all make mistakes. But I’m definitely gonna try to back him all the way to the WWE and there beyond just because he’s family. His old man is looking down on him. Reality of Wrestling is Zilla Fatu’s safe zone because one thing about his business, you’re gonna deal with a lot of different people, and you gotta know who to trust. At Reality of Wrestling, he’s at home.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

In a recent episode of the Kliq This podcast, WWE Hall of Famer and co-host Kevin Nash gave his thoughts about the changes in WWE since WWE CCO Paul “Triple H” Levesque took over creative in 2022 and his belief that Levesque would have left WWE had Vince McMahon regained creative power when he returned back to the company. Nash stated “My whole thing is, it’s just like, ‘Who’s the greatest of all time?’ Absolutely, there’s the 1A, 1B, whether you’re a Flair guy or you’re a Hogan guy, and then there’s the business aspect guy, and I say that the best run of anybody would be Triple H, from all standpoints of the business. There’s no comparison. I think one of the reasons that…because he’s so good at what he does on a daily [basis], as soon as he got his hands on the controls, shit changed, and the product, it just was night and day. Vince [McMahon] almost tried to kibosh it, and they went through all that shit again. I think at that point, if it wouldn’t have went the way it did, I think have walked. Steph [McMahon] already had. [Sean Oliver asked if he meant whether Vince McMahon stayed and took creative back.] Yeah. We never had the conversation, but I know Paul. I just did think that it was like, ‘Fuck, man.’ But I heard some other, I have talked to Paul about some other things, so I know some information and things that made me feel really good when I heard how they felt, Endeavor, how they felt about Paul.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

In a recent interview with the Insight with Chris Van Vliet podcast, Karrion Kross gave his thoughts about the process for the creation of his The Final Testament group in WWE and WWE’s original plans at one point was for them to be a MMA group. Kross stated “For quite some time, I had several people in creative tell me there was an idea being entertained of me leading a group. They had a bunch of people they were interested in putting together with us. I had a certain set of people I was interested in bringing in. Maybe at this time, I don’t say who, but one day I will say who. I don’t want it to be taken the wrong way and those people wind up getting disappointed. Someone had mentioned to me that AOP was on the roster with Paul Ellering. I was like, ‘Wait, what? Since when?’ Apparently, they had been there for a while and were looking for the right time to bring them into the fold. I said, ‘Okay, we can try that, for sure.’ We meet at the Performance Center and start shooting these cryptic vignettes. It was almost like Iron Man 3 with The Mandarin when he had the TVs behind him, Ben Kingsley, ‘They’ll never see me coming.’ These propaganda videos. It was really cool. I loved the set up. Initially, it was supposed to be, the direction we were going in was sort of a militia-cult group. I’ve always been one to try to stay away from reoccurring archetypes. There is nothing wrong with reoccurring archetypes in professional wrestling, films, and movies, they are what they are. I wanted to present something new to people, something fun, with nostalgia callbacks. That’s how it started. We’ve gone in different directions. At one point, they were like, ‘We kind of want you to be a mixed martial arts group.’ I was like, ‘That’s not a good idea.’ When you think about the times we’re being given to work, a mixed martial arts type of wrestler would be good in a 20-30 minute format because you have time to get into the holds. When you put people in holds and you’re doing submissions, it’s a lot of flat time. If the show is moving quickly and you keep the action going, what am I going to do? Put on a kneebar for three seconds? All of us can do that stuff, but we thought leaning more into the character direction rather than that would be a better thing to do. I wish we had 20-30 minutes. I would have walked out to Ken Shamrock’s theme.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

WWE announced two new matches for the card of next week’s WWE RAW show on October 28th in Hershey, Pennsylvania:

Sheamus vs. Ludwig Kaiser
Zelina Vega vs. Ivy Nile