Rumor Look Back: Apr. 23 - 29, 2016

Welcome to the weekly Rumor Look Back, where we look at the rumors from six months ago and see which played out as originally predicted. Let’s get right to it.

April 23, 2016

• John Cena hasn’t been officially cleared to return by WWE doctors. It could be as early as May or as late as July.
• It was on Memorial Day, which falls within that window. (1/1)
• The Shane McMahon vs. Authority angle could be starting on Raw next week.
• Since Triple H never came back to be part of the Authority, this angle never happened. (0/1)
• Regarding Finn Bálor main roster call up rumors, the Observer says "pitches have been made for him" and obviously he's coming up at some point but it's unclear when.
• I love the vagueness of this one. “He’ll be up at one point.” (1/1)

April 25, 2016

• WWE is expected to pay tribute to Chyna tonight on Raw.
• They had a graphic in the beginning of the show and then played a video package later on in the show. If I recall, there was some criticism that the video package was buried in the third hour. (1/1)
• The Observer notes that Bray Wyatt will likely be out for six weeks thanks to the calf injury he suffered during the WWE house show at the start of the European tour
• It was 8 weeks from this rumor. (0/1)
• Randy Orton could still be 2-3 months away from returning to WWE.
• He finally returned on July 24 at Battleground, which is pretty much 3 months away from this rumor. (1/1)
• While there are still rumors of Finn Bálor getting called up to the main roster ASAP, there are some other rumors going around that they could be building to a cage match at the next Takeover event between Bálor and Samoa Joe.
• Finn wasn’t called up for a couple months. They went with the cage match instead. (1/1)

April 26, 2016

• With seven matches for the main card, a pre-show match and the Vince McMahon decision segment, it's expected the Payback card is complete. Expect something for New Day to do, possibly a promo which leads to a quick match, but that's it.
• One of the matches must have been shifted to the pre-show because the card has 6 matches and 2 pre-show. New Day were ringside for the tag team #1 contender’s match (the one where Enzo took that nasty hit against the ropes), but they didn’t have any promo or match segment. (1/2)
• Apparently Lillian Garcia introducing Colin Cassady by his full character name lead to a shouting match between the ring announcer and WWE officials at a European show last week. The company only wants him going by "Big Cass" now.
• Another last name we can pour one out for.

April 27, 2016

• AJ Styles isn't expected to align with Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows at Payback, and Roman Reigns will leave the show as WWE world heavyweight champion.
• This show AJ remained solo and while he had help from the the Club, it seemed to be without his permission. They were officially aligned by the rematch at the next show. (2/2)
• The plan is for Alberto Del Rio to turn babyface at one point, though how soon is unclear.
• He’s since been released and didn’t work babyface prior to that. (0/1)
• According to PW Insider, Adam Rose responding to his suspension the way he did was a "shock" to "a lot of people" within WWE. It's not likely to affect his job, however.
• This is a difficult one because the entire situation affected his job. But this was after he was arrested for domestic violence (a charge which was dropped) and asked for his own release. So we don’t know how much this lead to his release compared to the events that followed. Because of that, I’ll leave it ungraded.
• Dave Meltzer mentioned on a recent episode of the LAW that a second party interested in buying/investing in TNA is a television company.
• Fight Network has been in the news trying to pay Billy Corgan what he’s owed and funding TNA. While I’m not positive that they are the subject of this rumor, I’m going to grade it as correct. (1/1)

April 28, 2016

• It looks likely Vince McMahon will choose both Shane McMahon and Stephanie to run WWE and we'll get some sort of in-house competition as the progression of the storyline they're doing, possibly one running Raw and one running SmackDown.
• Yeah, that’s exactly how it happened. (2/2)
• Finn Bálor losing the title to Samoa Joe at the NXT house show was apparently just WWE moving back the original plan of having Joe win at Takeover: Dallas, according to the Observer.
• I still think he should have just lost at Dallas.
• It's expected that Prince Puma will stay with Lucha Underground and his character will be involved in all storylines the company is taping for season three and beyond.
• We’ll have to wait and see what the plans are for beyond season 3.

April 29, 2016

• Bryan Alvarez mentioned on Wrestling Observer Live recently that he heard Bray Wyatt's leg injury could keep him out 6-to-8 weeks.
• They returned June 20, which would be within that window. (1/1)
• Here's one you'll be shocked by: people within WWE have been really impressed by what they've seen from Enzo Amore and Colin Cassady on the main roster so far. That said, they still aren't expected to win at Payback.
• They didn’t win at Payback, due to the injury to Enzo. (1/1)

This Week: 13/17 - 76%

Overall: 1,159/2,155 - 53.8%

Have a great week, everyone!