Debunkathon: News Updates on Bayley's camp, Becky Lynch, TNA, More (Patreon)
Content
Welcome to the Fightful Friday tradition: The Debunkathon. In addition to debunking progressively stupid things, we've got a huge news update including:
WWE comps
Bayley's camp
Gotham wrestling tapings
Becky Lynch interview
TNA tapings
Darby Allin
Trump/Cena
More
What Lana noted to TMZ about wrestlers and relatives having to pay for tickets to attend WWE shows is accurate, and has been a big point of frustration over the last year with talent. A number of veterans have advised wrestlers to work it into their contracts moving forward.
This won't come as a surprise, but we're told Nattie had been pushing for the "Nattie" character for quite some time. We have a full report on Select.
Fightful has asked over two dozen wrestlers about who Becky Lynch was referencing about blacklisting women's talent that wouldn't sleep with them. None of the talent we spoke with claimed they knew. It was intimated to us that WWE planned to look into it upon hearing it, but we've had no further updates. We have continued asking.
There were some people surprised to see Chris Dickinson worked the recent Gotham Wrestling tapings. However, he worked the October tapings as well.
Charlotte Flair, Lyra Valkyria and Ivy Nile helped out with Bayley's Lodestone camp with independent wrestlers. The talent that we heard from spoke glowingly of the camp.
We spoke to sources in AEW who predicted last night that things would unfold with Netflix and WBD as they did over the next day. Thus far, there are no details on the future of AEW on WBD and most people that we spoke to don't expect anything significant to happen for quite some time.
TNA has a number of new talent coming in to El Paso for the tapings this weekend.
Darby Allin was hospitalized after his match with Kevin Knight, but was released already.
We asked a number of WWE sources if Donald Trump would be at John Cena's last match. One said "I would be surprised, but who fuckin knows."
Wrestlevotes Radio held their first Fightful Select episode. Check it out here.
Elsewhere
Wrestling Observer reports that there's talk of Nikki Bella becoming a manager down the line. We can confirm she is not done with WWE.
A WWE source indicated to Wrestling Observer that TNA would like AJ Styles to wrestle on the first show on AMC. In related news, we would love Will Washington or Shane Helms to return to Fightful for our WWE Raw reviews.
Observer estimates AEW Full Gear at 140,000 PPV buys.
The InfantrySean Ross Sapp spoke with The Infantry ahead of ROH Final Battle. Shawn Dean books extra talent for AEW and did before he was even full time there as a wrestler. He said it makes him proud to see people he's booked land anywhere -- TNA, NXT, WWE, AEW, but obviously especially AEW. Carlie Bravo said every day he has people trying to go through him in order to get booked and it doesn't work.They got introduced because Carlie Bravo went to the Nightmare Factory, and Cody Rhodes and QT Marshall were close with Shawn Dean and suggested they meet. Carlie said they connected and hit it off immediately. They said if they had to add names to the Infantry, Steve Maclin, Swerve Strickland and someone like Tehuti Miles (Ashante Thee Adonis) would all be considered. The full interview is at this link.DEBUNKATHON
A lot of people are sharing something out of context claiming that Roman Reigns said Ric Flair was the only wrestler better than him. It was a "stop when you hear a better wrestler than you" game.
Nobody has reported that Rhea Ripley is starring in Terrifier 4.
Sportskeeda clickbait -- Rhea Ripley "collapsing" was just a spot gone wrong. She's fine.
Sportskeeda sucks. I'm not event going to link to it, but no, their claims that Zoey Stark is the masked attacker are not true. She's very much still recovering from an ACL injury.