Kenny Omega Breaks Silence On Cody Rhodes, Bobby Lashley Legit Injured, Scrapped WrestleMania Main Event – Audio News Bulletin – February 21, 2022

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Kenny Omega has spoken out about Cody Rhodes leaving AEW, Bobby Lashley is legitimately injured, a scrapped WrestleMania main event, and more.

It’s Monday morning, Elimination Chamber is in the rear view mirror and we’re now firmly on the road to WrestleMania. I’m Liam Winnard for WrestleTalk.com, and this is our audio news bulletin for February 21, 2022.

Listen to this morning’s round-up here:

Kenny Omega Breaks Silence, Cody Rhodes Updates

AEW Executive Vice President and former World Champion Kenny Omega won the 2021 Wrestling Observer Newsletter wrestler of the year award, and to celebrate, he appeared on Wrestling Observer Radio this past weekend.

Omega ended up talking in quite a lot of depth about Cody Rhodes’ AEW departure and the circumstances between the EVPs which had been a hot topic even before Rhodes left.

Omega said that he was surprised about Rhodes leaving considering how passionate he was about leading the revolution when AEW started, but pointed to different visions on behalf of each of the EVPs as a likely reason.

He said:

“And maybe in the end, we had the Bucks and their vision, we had my vision, and then we had Cody’s vision, and all of our visions were different from one another. And I would say mine was more similar to what the Bucks had envisioned, and Cody’s was out-there. It was much different.”

Omega also specifically mentioned that he and the Bucks never really wanted to go to war with Vince McMahon and WWE, and it was actually Cody that did.

He then spoke about how the difference in visions has kind of been tamed thanks to Tony Khan taking full booking control, although this is believed to be something Rhodes wasn’t a fan of. Omega added: “It’s very possible that this current version of AEW just wasn’t a good fit for Cody”.

In other Cody related updates, there was an image going around of him at an airport in Poland, which prompted rumors about him potentially flying to Saudi Arabia for Elimination Chamber. That image was photoshopped, and Rhodes was not, in fact, at an airport in Poland, or in Saudi Arabia.

He was instead in Orlando, Florida, enjoying the festivities of Shawn Spears’ birthday. There had also been reports last week that Rhodes could potentially have been Performance Center bound at the weekend, which is also based in Orlando, but it’s not been confirmed whether he ended up doing anything WWE-related while he was there, or if it was just for Spears’ birthday.

Bobby Lashley Injured, Other Elimination Chamber Fallout

Cody Rhodes was not at Elimination Chamber, but Bobby Lashley did walk into the show as WWE Champion, and walked out not champion as it was Brock Lesnar who won the Elimination Chamber match by last eliminating Austin Theory to make his match against Roman Reigns at WrestleMania a title vs title match.

A lot of people saw that coming, but what people didn’t see coming was the way Lashley exited the Chamber. Before it was even Lashley’s turn to enter, Seth Rollins powerbombed Theory into Lashley’s pod, breaking the pod open, and causing Lashley to suffer a storyline concussion, and he was taken out of the match by the medical team.

In reality, Lashley suffered a shoulder injury at Royal Rumble that might require surgery, and that is why he didn’t get physical in the Chamber, and hasn’t wrestled since that match against Lesnar at the Rumble.

The news of the injury was first reported by Kazeem Famuyide on The Ringer Wrestling Show, who said Lashley could be out for four months as a result of the injury.

PWInsider then followed up by reporting that Lashley is scheduled to see a doctor in Birmingham, Alabama this week, and that check-up will determine whether he does need surgery or not.

In another injury scare from Elimination Chamber, Madcap Moss took a horrifying bump during his match against Drew McIntyre, as Moss tucked his chin when receiving an inverted Alabama Slam and landed right on his head, instead of landing flat.

It was somewhat miraculous that Moss even finished the match but, according to Fightful Select, he assured McIntyre, Happy Corbin who was ringside, and the referee, that he was fine to continue.

There was said to be concern in the Gorilla position at first, but once they got word that Moss was fine, they were very quick to want to show replays of what had transpired.

There’s said to be no heat on either wrestler, and Moss apologised to Vince McMahon, McIntyre and the producers about his error.

Moss was said to be fine after the match too, so fingers crossed he’ll be okay, but it seems like one of those bumps where you only really know for sure the next day.

In other Elimination Chamber related news, The Miz teased bringing in a tag team partner for a WrestleMania match against Rey and Dominik Mysterio, which is reportedly set to be Logan Paul, and Bianca Belair won the women’s Chamber so she’ll be challenging Becky Lynch for the Raw Women’s Championship at WrestleMania.

Scrapped WrestleMania Main Event

Speaking of which, we nearly didn’t get that, because WWE was, at one point, heavily considering a four-way match between the four horsewomen – Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch, Bayley and Sasha Banks.

This was reported by Louis Dangoor of GiveMeSport, who said it was being seriously considered in November and early December as the main event for night one, but when it became clear that Ronda Rousey would be returning, WWE opted to have her in that spot instead, which has obviously panned out to be against Charlotte Flair.

 

While Rousey was the main reason, a happy biproduct is that it means we’ll get the return match of Becky Lynch vs Bianca Belair after Belair never got her revenge for Lynch beating her in 26 seconds at SummerSlam, which some people backstage had been hoping would happen.

It was added that, while the four-way won’t be happening at Mania this time around, it is something WWE is actively looking to do before too long.

Other Stuff

In other little bits of news…

Undertaker was announced as an inductee into the 2022 Hall of Fame, and according to PWInsider, there were plans at one point for him to travel to Saudi Arabia and make a cameo appearance on the Elimination Chamber show, but that didn’t happen.

Kurt Angle was also at one point supposed to be on Elimination Chamber, and Angle himself said the idea was for him to be a special referee in a match between RK-Bro and the Alpha Academy, who he was originally going to have been involved with in their recent TV segments after the Royal Rumble, but the whole idea of him being involved in their rivalry ended up being dropped.

We mentioned earlier that Kenny Omega won the Observer’s 2021 Wrestler of the Year award. Some other notable award winners were the Young Bucks winning tag team of the year, MJF winning best on promos, the Young Bucks vs the Lucha Brothers steel cage match at All Out winning match of the year, Tay Conti winning the most improved, Jade Cargill winning rookie of the year, Paul Heyman winning non-wrestler of the year, Excalibur winning best announcer, Corey Graves as the worst announcer, and Tony Khan winning best booker and promoter of the year.

Speaking of Khan, he said that he’s working on something that “would be massive” for AEW, but we have no idea on even the nature of what that might be.

Another note on Omega is that he said he was originally hoping to be back in February, but that won’t be happening and it could now be at least a couple of months before he’s back in action.

Kairi Sane has officially returned to STARDOM so it appears her WWE contract and time as an ambassador has officially come to an end.

And Booker T said that his former student Rok-C had signed with WWE… and then said he misspoke when he said that.

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