AEW Debut Potential Spoilers, WrestleMania Plans Chaos, Randy Orton/Shane McMahon Incident – Audio News Bulletin – February 9, 2022

Potential spoilers for tonight’s big AEW debut, WrestleMania plans are in chaos… still, an incident involving Randy Orton and Shane McMahon, and more.

It’s Wednesday, and it’s the big day we finally find out AEW’s newest signing. I’m Liam Winnard for WrestleTalk.com, and this is our audio news bulletin for February 9, 2022.

Listen to today’s round-up here:

Who On Earth Is Debuting For AEW Tonight?

Yesterday we mentioned Keith Lee and Jeff Hardy as potential candidates for tonight’s big AEW debut, and we’ll have updates on those in a second, but another name has emerged into the fold, that being Killer Kross, the former Karrion Kross, probably along with his fiancée Scarlett Bordeaux.

People didn’t seem to be mentioning Kross’ name with the general consensus being – and this isn’t necessarily my personal opinion – that Kross would be a bit of a letdown considering how much Tony Khan has hyped up the debut.

There was always the lingering point that Khan does sometimes have a tendency to get a bit excited like a giddy child on Christmas morning, but a new video with Kross and Scarlett really ramped up the speculation yesterday.

The pair were doing a signing, on video, and a clip emerged of a moment where Scarlett potentially nearly let the big secret slip out.

It’s hard to explain so if you haven’t seen it your best bet is to go to WrestleTalk.com and find it – it will be easy to find – but the general gist is someone off-screen joked that Kross and Scarlett could be headed to Atlantic City on Wednesday, which is where tonight’s Dynamite is being held. Scarlett then started to ask “Oh, is that…” before Kross gave her a death stare and they both burst out into nervous laughter.

So that was one couple who potentially may have spoiled things, but they’re not the only ones, because Mia Yim and Keith Lee may have gotten in on the trick too.

Keith was seemingly the favorite as of yesterday, but then his wife Mia Yim posted a picture of them together in a tropical setting which many people assumed meant they were on their honeymoon because they got married this past weekend.

Well, it turns out, that picture was actually from 2020 as some people matched it up with one that Yim had posted two years ago. So now the theory is they were trying to pretend they were on their honeymoon, but in doing so, accidentally exposed the fact they’re not, thus possibly spoiling the debut.

🥂cheers 🥂 pic.twitter.com/IA4syWZPSk

— Michin 미친 (@MiaYim) February 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/Machobeard4life/status/1491184073427292160?

So those are the two leading contenders heading into tonight. In the case of Jeff Hardy, his brother Matt confirmed that his non-compete runs until March 10 so we’re more than likely going to have to wait until then, but he did say it was possible that Khan could buy Hardy out of his non-compete if he wanted to. Matt said:

“As far as an update on Jeff and what’s going on, I don’t think he’s the guy that’s coming in this Wednesday against Isiah Kassidy. Although who knows? Tony Khan, Papa Khan’s got a lot of money. Maybe he bought out his contract. And maybe it is happening early. Who knows?”

I certainly don’t know, as you can probably tell by the mishmash of clues I’ve included in today’s round-up.

Other names that are possible but haven’t really gotten a lot of traction are Samoa Joe, Adam Scherr (the former Braun Strowman), Windham Rotunda (the former Bray Wyatt), Johnny Gargano who has said he’s waiting for his wife Candice LeRae to give birth before he returns to action, and Swerve Strickland (the former Isaiah Scott), who probably isn’t a big enough name to fit the billing.

I was going to make the joke yesterday, but I didn’t, so I’ll make it now instead – how hilarious would it be if it was Cody Rhodes, because technically, he is a free agent.

In another tiny add-on to the debut news, Tony Khan mentioned that the debut will play into plans for this week’s Rampage as well.

Shane McMahon Chaos Causes… More Chaos

Shane McMahon being “let go” by WWE seemed like something that was done to make the road to WrestleMania a smoother one, because it meant Shane would stop arguing with Vince about his plans.

Well, it turns out, Shane leaving has caused a problem of its own. WrestleVotes reported yesterday that Shane’s match at WrestleMania was going to be positioned as one of the biggest on the card, but now he won’t be there, WWE is scrambling to look for a “major attraction” match to put in its place.

In terms of who Shane would be facing, Bobby Lashley was mentioned at the start of the year, Shane himself wanted Austin Theory, but it seemed the plan WWE had finally settled on was Seth Rollins, and that match was supposed to be set up in the upcoming Elimination Chamber, which Shane won’t be in now either.

So Rollins is having quite the time of it, because he was actually originally supposed to win the WWE Championship at Day 1 and go into WrestleMania as the defending champion, but when that all changed because of Roman Reigns’ Covid absence, the plan for Rollins shifted to Shane, and now that’s not happening anymore, so who knows what he’s going to end up doing?

Not WWE apparently, because another thing WrestleVotes mentioned was that the Mania card is “still in complete flux”.

Randy Orton/Shane McMahon Backstage Incident At Royal Rumble

Staying on the topic of Shane O’Mac, details have emerged regarding an incident backstage with Randy Orton at the Royal Rumble, the Rumble being where all the issues with Shane came to fruition.

One of the many bizarre things that transpired was confusion regarding the entry order for Shane and Orton. As things happened, Shane came out at 28 and Orton at 29, but Shane seemed to think they should have been the other way around.

When Shane’s music hit at 28, Orton gave him a cue to basically say “well, I’m not going out to your music pal, so off you pop”.

According to Fightful Select, that “verbal cue” we speak of, was actually Orton literally rolling on the floor laughing at the whole situation.

Other Stuff

In other little bits of news…

Dolph Ziggler made an appearance on NXT 2.0 last night, and seemed to set up matches with Tommaso Ciampa and NXT Champion Bron Breakker, the latter of which has been teased for a couple of weeks now on social media.

On the topic of NXT, WWE decided to try something new last night – having cameramen actually in the ring during matches. That sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Next week’s NXT Vengeance Day card is Bron Breakker defending the NXT Championship against Santos Escobar, Carmelo Hayes defending the North American Championship against Cameron Grimes, MSK vs the Creed Brothers in the Dusty Classic final, Gigi Dolin and Jacy Jayne defending the NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship against Indi Hartwell and Persia Pirotta, and Pete Dunne vs Tony D’Angelo in a “weaponized” steel cage match.

For Impact Knockouts Champion Mickie James’ appearance in the Royal Rumble, WWE banned certain words. According to Will Washington of Fightful, WWE made sure to call James the IMPACT Women’s Champion, not the real name of the title, the IMPACT Knockouts World Champion. Another thing is commentators were allowed to say IMPACT, but not IMPACT Wrestling.

AJ Styles said he believes The Miz is the best heel in the business, and Styles was paid a compliment of his own when JBL called him the modern-day Shawn Michaels.

A crazy stat was pulled out which is that the Alpha Academy’s win over the Street Profits on this past Monday’s Raw was Chad Gable’s first pinfall win in nearly two years, the most recent one before that being his win over Mojo Rawley when he was Shorty G in June 2020.

Tony Khan said that he has specifically asked Bryan Danielson to mentor Jade Cargill.

And WWE Raw drew it’s lowest viewership of all time this past Monday, with 1.387 million viewers. This was of course because the show was on SyFy because of the Winter Olympics coverage on USA.

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• audio news bulletin
• Shane McMahon
• keith lee
• Killer Kross

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