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Welcome to the weekly Rumor Look Back, where we look at rumors from six months ago to see how they ended up playing out. Let's get right to this week's rumors.
The plan regarding the NXT Women’s Division involves Bayley eventually losing to Eva Maria in what WWE hopes will be Eva Marie’s Total Divas’ redemption story. The plan is for Bayley to get one feud win, likely over Dana Brooke, before dropping the belt.
Pretty much none of that happened. Bayley has fended off Sasha a second time, Eva herself, Nia Jax, and Carmella and will go on to face Asuka soon. Eva Marie is not currently in the title picture, and while it certainly can happen in the future, not in the way the rumor laid out. (0/1)
In the wake of last week’s firing of Zahra Schreiber, WWE will start doing extensive background checks of potential signees, including social media accounts.
You’d think that would have been a policy they didn’t need to implement the hard way.
PWInsider has heard reports that a major player from TNA’s past will be returning shortly. The unnamed individual will have a big role in the company moving forward.
Jeff Jarrett had already made his return prior to this rumor, so it’s not referring to him. TNA was building to Bound for Glory and after that, spent 3 months airing a bunch of shows taped from July. So this rumor is incorrect. (0/1)
Kane was supposed to return to Raw last week, but the decision to bring Sting in pushed him to next week.
He didn’t return until later in the month at Night of Champions. (0/1)
Tough Enough finalist Amanda Saccomanno was backstage at Raw, fueling speculation that WWE is interested in signing the former fitness model.
They did sign her. You can read all about it in Bill Hanstock’s super Total Divas recaps… while you can since the ratings are tanking. (1/1)
Early word is the Divas Title match will have some sort of non-finish on Raw next week so the match can continue at Night of Champions. This means no matter what happens on Monday, Nikki Bella will have surpassed AJ’s record.
This is true. In the match, Brie replaced Nikki but got pinned in a failed twin magic move. Stephanie McMahon made the call that Nikki couldn’t lose the title since she was not pinned. They did go and finish off the match at Night of Champions. Ric Flair cried multiple times. (1/1)
Emma is working with Bayley at house shows, so despite other rumors, she could still be in the title mix for NXT TakeOver in October.
The main event was the Iron Man match between Sasha Banks and Bayley so Emma was never in that mix. It’s unfortunate that heel Emma never got a spot in a title picture. (0/1)
Speculation regarding who will be Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose’s partner at Night of Champions has Erick Rowa returning sooner than planned or maybe Baron Corbin (which was started with a WWE.com image of him on the team that many think is a fake.)
It ended up being Chris Jericho. Rowan returned not long after and Corbin is still down in NXT. (0/2)
A source within WWE contacted the Observer to refute Lana’s claims that she’s training hard to get into the ring after her wrist injury. The source said that she hasn’t been in the Performance Center in "forever" and doesn’t attend NXT house shows. It’s possible she’s setting up her own Eva Marie training storyline.
This may be the slow burn that eventual heats up to Nuclear Heat.
His segment on last week’s SmackDown are part of Bo Dallas being re-packaged away from his motivational gimmick into… something else. Dallas thinking his attack on R-Truth post match was "funny" may be part of his new character.
I had to go find the clip to even remember what this was referring to. This lead to nothing. He is finally back on TV with the #SocialOutcasts. And I’m kind of glad he switched to the singlet. (0/1)
Kevin Owens vs. Ryback will be added to the Night of Champions card.
The match happened, and KO won his first main stage singles title when he captured the Intercontinental Championship that night. (1/1)
Backstage chatter has Undertaker continuing as a part timer past WrestleMania 32. What he was able to do and how he felt at SummerSlam has the Dead Man thinking he may have a couple more years left in the tank at this pace.
We’ll put this in the outstanding column. I believe he is not retiring after WrestleMania 32. If he were, the story would likely be directly about him instead of him being part of a McMahon family saga.
Eric Bischoff, who has worked with WWE for the next batch of Monday Night War episodes, is being considered for a spot for a future Stone Cold Podcast.
Given the first part of the sentence mentioning WWE, I am taking this rumor to mean that they are referring to the WWE Network Podcasts and not any Austin podcast. That has not happened yet but I’ll give it a bit more time.
While Ronda Rousey’s film schedule could facilitate wrestling training, her filming of Mile 22 will likely rule her out for Texas 2016 given the overseas filming dates.
I am putting all WrestleMania match rumors outstanding until the card has happened. That way, there are no last minute changes that affected already graded rumors. But I don’t think Ronda will be there this year.
According to the Observer, WWE has boxes of John Cena’s "The Champ is Here" shirt with the US Title ready to roll out after Night of Champions, implying he will win.
He did win. I don’t know how many new shirts flooded WWE.com, but I’m sure it was a good deal. (1/1)
It looks like Sting’s match against Seth Rollins is a lock to go on before Rollins’ match against John Cena for the US title.
Nothing is a lock in pro-wrestling. The show closed with Sting vs. Seth Rollins. (0/1)
Michael PS Hayes is considered a front-runner for the WWE Hall of Fame along side his Freebird teammates for the 2016 class.
It was just announced last week. (1/1)
Based on the reaction for the Dudleys, WWE is willing to give the Hardys another look, despite the brothers’ past troubles.
The Hardys are both in TNA still, with Matt the TNA Champion. I’ll give this rumor maybe six months before marking it.
TNA talent has not heard anything about the company’s future past October’s Bound for Glory PPV.
That’s because there was no news regarding their future for months as TNA aired past matches and had no active tapings. It was towards the end of the year that the new TV deal was announced.
Sting will be back on Raw for the Night of Champions go home show this Monday. No word what he will be doing or if the crowd will see outside backstage skits unlike last week in Baltimore.
This was the episode where a Sting vs. Big Show match turned into a Sting/John Cena vs. Big Show/Seth Rollins tag team match. It was Sting’s only victory in WWE. (1/1)
Betting lines have Seth Rollins as a big favorite against Sting and a big underdog against John Cena.
The lines turned out to be accurate. Then again, I think that was easily predictable for most prior to this.
Impact Wrestling is still on internal Destination America schedules past September, so it’s possible they negotiated a lesser deal with the channel to stay on US boxes. There still aren’t any tapings so it is likely that the October episodes would likely be pre-taped shows or greatest hits/clip shows.
Impact did stay on Destination America for three more months, but it was not a negotiation to stay on there full time. (I am unsure which the rumor was implying but looking at other sites wrestling rumors, I believe it was to imply full time.) They did air pre-taped shows from month’s prior as predicted. (1/2)
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This Week: 7/16 - 44%
Overall: 706/1325 - 53.3%
Have a great week, everyone.