Wrestling Rumor Reactions: Sasha Banks Update, Lio Rush, David Starr

The world of wrestling rumors is a fast paced minefield, with WWE, Impact, NJPW, AEW and many more promotions constantly ushering in talent signing and releases, planning matches or other spectacles and shifting their backstage building blocks. Let’s see if we can make sense of what’s going on, shall we?

I’m Tom Colohue and these are your Wrestling Rumor Reactions.

Sasha Banks to SmackDown

There continues to be a lot of speculation as to the future of Sasha Banks. With Banks’ WWE hiatus continuing seemingly indefinitely, it’s hard to say what’s going to happen next. Whatever plans WWE had for her may well have changed by necessity at this point.

Interestingly, local syndication for Money In The Bank suggests that Sasha Banks will be announced on this week’s Raw as a member of the eponymous briefcase ladder match by Alexa Bliss.

In addition to this, Brad Shepherd announced on his podcast that Sasha Banks would be returning shortly but would also be moving to SmackDown Live.

What happens next nobody can really know for certain unless your name actually is Sasha Banks. Both sides are keeping relatively quiet about the situation but hopefully, whatever happens, we get to see Sasha Banks wrestling again very soon.

David Starr costs Jay Lethal the Ring of Honor Title

There’s been a lot of change over at Ring of Honor this year. It was recently announced that David Starr would be challenging ROH champion Jay Lethal for the promotion’s top title. Before this match could happen, Matt Taven became the ROH champion, leaving Lethal vs Starr in Israel to be a non title match.

The Jewish Telegraph, a UK newspaper, are reporting that Jay Lethal lost the title in order to punish Starr for comments made about the Sinclair Broadcast Group. I asked them for a picture of their report which I attached to the tweet below.

Fightful also shared a report covering comments in which Starr states he would not work for Ring of Honor again.

“I knew that with doing this, saying what I felt needed to be said, that I wouldn’t probably ever work for Ring Of Honor. But I wasn’t really concerned with that because I never, ever want to receive a paycheck from that corporation. So that didn’t really bother me, that idea.”

Lio Rush banned from TV

Lio Rush has made himself very unpopular in the Raw locker room by continually insisting that his wife come along to any event that he attends. This is according to the latest in-depth Fightful report.

Rush has unfortunately been the subject of a lot of controversy during his brief time with the company. Whether this is going back to his joke about Emma’s departure while still in NXT or ongoing issues now. The report claims that Rush is also unpopular at current due to an unhappy altercation with a Finn Balor who was trying to help alleviate the tension. All of this tied in together means that Lio Rush might be vanishing from your TV screens in the coming months.

Lio Rush is an incredibly talented wrestler and is also very smooth on the microphone. This, unfortunately, is an example of someone who isn’t talented at locker room politics. This is often cited as a good thing, that locker room politics are bad and not worth becoming good at but being able to connect positively with your colleagues is important in all walks of life.

He’s still very young though and has a lot of time to learn.

Dean Malenko leaves WWE

Sports Illustrated are reporting that, after eighteen years with the WWE, Dean Malenko has now quit the company.

Malenko has been booking individual matches, particularly tag matches, for a long time with the company. His in ring career with WWE may have been brief but his time with WCW and ECW is still moderately well remembered.

Curiously, All Elite Wrestling have already taken advantage of the situation and announced Malenko for their upcoming Starrcast event.

Joey Ryan offered a WWE deal

Some brief pieces to wrap up WRR. WWE have apparently approach Joey Ryan with a contract offer. This is according to the Wrestling Observer. The report also states that Ryan is unlikely to take the offer at this point in time.

Luke Harper forced extension

Finally, also from the Wrestling Observer, WWE have apparently rejected Luke Harper’s request for a release. Not only has he been denied, but he has been told that his contract will be automatically extended by six months to compensate for the period in which Harper was unavailable due to injury.

What rumors in the wrestling world are catching your eye? Let me know on Twitter or in the comments below.