Shotzi became the 17th WWE star to have been given the boot from the company, with Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful reporting that she was notified that her contract was not being renewed.
Her profile on WWE.COM has already been transferred to the alumni section.
“I am more than grateful for the wild ride! Can’t wait to see where this crazy journey takes me next! I hope to make all my believers proud,” she wrote on X later.
The 33-year-old star seemingly knew she was getting the axe on Thursday, posting a video on social media saying whatever happens next, she’s ready for it.
Shotzi signed with WWE in 2019 and was part of NXT until her main roster call up came in 2021. An ACL tear kept her out of action for almost a year and she had just returned to action in December of last year.
Her last match was on the February 14 episode of Speed on X, losing to Zoey Stark.
NXT’s Dani Palmer also announced on social media that she has been let go from the company yesterday.
The 27-year-old signed in 2022 and trained at the WWE Performance Center.
“Thank you WWE for bringing me to the love of my life the past 3 years have been amazing! It’s a bittersweet feeling to be officially closing out my athletic career, but I can truly say I went til the wheels fell off.. literally lol,” she wrote on her socials.
“Our bodies are a gift and mine has been so kind to me. I look forward to this next chapter!! Gods been giving me some big dreams with bringing my business back and I couldn’t be more stoked about it! Thank you all for the support,” she added.
She last wrestled on the February 21 episode of Evolve, losing to Kali Armstrong. Most of her matches came at NXT live events and the now-canceled NXT Level Up.
Another match was confirmed for Backlash last night on Smackdown, with the United States title on the line.
Announced by Smackdown General Manager Nick Aldis, United States champion Jacob Fatu will be defending his gold against three others – Drew McIntyre, Damian Priest, and LA Knight – in a fatal four-way match a week from today.
This is the fourth match on the Backlash card which also includes John Cena vs Randy Orton, Lyra Valkyria vs Becky Lynch for the Women’s Intercontinental title, and Gunther vs Pat McAfee.
PWInsider.com is reporting that Eric Tompkins and Ross Forman were promoted to Vice Presidents at TNA Wrestling.
Tompkins has served as the Director of TV Production but his new official title as VP has not been revealed.
Forman has been working for TNA for the past 20 years and his title was Head Of Media Relations, coordinating all marketing and promotions as well as fulfilling media interview requests for TNA talent. Just like Tompkins, his new VP title is not known yet.
Congratulations to the two on their new promotion.
Some individuals who were released from WWE yesterday commented about their unfortunate exit on social media.
Shayna Baszler, who worked for WWE since 2017, wrote on X, “No one can offer what I have to offer. Reality. Let the Galaxy burn.”
Dakota Kai, who just a few days ago unveiled a new look and wrote that she misses wrestling and she’s not injured, posted a GIF which says, “Ah shit, here we go again.” She had already been released before but brought back as part of Damage CTRL by Triple H when he took over.
A surprising name cut was Cora Jade from NXT. “Thankful for all the childhood dreams I got to live out! I have a lot to say in due time. Stay tuned xoxo,” she wrote on X under her new name of Elayna Black. She had been with WWE since 2021.
Former Toxic Attraction member Gigi Dolin, who has been with the company since 2021, was also given the boot. She was just recently one of the talent sent to work with TNA as well. “Officially free to work in 30 days,” she wrote, before giving out her e-mail address for bookings.
Jakara Jackson, who this week along with the rest of the Meta Four decided to go for singles action and break up as a team, will now have to find a new job as well. “Always BEEN and always GON be bout that motha fkn ACTION,” she wrote in a post on Instagram.
Former fellow Meta Four member Oro Mensah added, “15 years hard work and true sacrifice to make it to WWE. Always gave it my 110% and put my whole passion and body into the artform of pro-wrestling. Thank you for all the support! love y’all.”
The individual tickets for both NXT/AAA Worlds Collide and Money In The Bank premium live events will go on sale this coming Wednesday at 8AM PT on Ticketmaster.com.
A pre-sale will kick off a day before on Tuesday, May 6 also at 8AM PT.
It’s unclear how much combo tickets for the two shows were moved over the past two weeks. Both events take place on Saturday, June 7, with the Worlds Collide show at the Kia Forum and the Money In The Bank from the nearby Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California.
Worlds Collide will be the first official show featuring both NXT and AAA stars, the Mexican company that WWE acquired during WrestleMania weekend.
There was no escaping Black Friday at WWE again as its usual after WrestleMania, WWE goes on a firing spree and this year, it was no different.
Dakota Kai, Shayna Baszler, Braun Strowman, Katana Chance, Kayden Carter, Cora Jade, Jakara Jackson, Eddy Thorpe, Gigi Dolin, Riley Osborne, Javier Bernal, Oro Mensah, Mark Coffey, Joe Coffey, and Wolfgang have been given the boot according to multiple sources.
That makes a total of 15 WWE and NXT stars who have been released, with some surprising names making the list. Those from the main roster have 90-day no-compete clauses as part of their deal while NXT stars have 30 days.
This is in addition to the 12 names from WWE HQ who were also let go on Thursday.
NXT star Trick Williams will be wrestling at the upcoming TNA Under Siege event.
On last night’s episode of Impact, it was revealed that Williams will team up with Frankie Kazarian to take on TNA World champion Joe Hendry and Elijah.
Williams and Hendry have been at it since the NXT episode after Stand & Deliver, with Hendry appearing on NXT and Williams at Rebellion and Impact.
Apart from this match, Eddie Edwards vs Cody Deaner with the stipulation that if Deaner loses, he must leave TNA, was also announced along with the previously reported Masha Slamovich vs Victoria Crawford for the Knockouts title.
The event takes place on Friday, May 23 exclusively on TNA+.
Erik of The War Raiders sat down with Chris Van Vliet for another episode of Insight where he discussed subjects such as his near-fatal motorbike accident, neck injury, the name Viking Experience, and Valhalla returning to WWE.
On his near-fatal motorcycle accident:
“So in 2014 actually, just after War Machine started rolling. He [Ivar] and I spent 11 or 12 years each not making any money in wrestling, basically both giving up on making wrestling our career. We get offered Ring of Honor contracts. We start wrestling. Everything’s starting to go good. Then like I had done every day for two years, I got on my motorcycle, went to the gym, left the gym on my way to get something to eat. A girl was texting at a stop sign and she just pulled out right in front of my motorcycle. So I was going about 55 miles an hour, and she was maybe 30 feet in front of me. I hadn’t even had the conscious decision to brake, whether I was going to try to brake and turn to miss her or lay my bike down, I just kind of said, Oh! I didn’t even get the full word out of my mouth, so I wasn’t even censoring myself, and I smashed into the back of her car. So instead of hitting the hood, I had turned and jerked the wheel and I hit the back seat. So because I had torqued the handlebars like this, I broke my left thumb. I shattered everything above my left arm to my elbow to my shoulder. Then I went up over my handlebars. I punched out her rear window with my face, lacerated above my eye, broke my nose, but I didn’t break the cartilage. I broke the bone, the skull, hit my knee, then I stood up, and my arm was like wiggling. The girl comes out of the car, and she’s crying. She’s like, ‘Do you need me to call the ambulance?’ And I was like, Yes, please. Then the ambulance shows up and they pull up across the street or across the intersection.”
You’re still standing at this point?
“Yeah, I was. I had sat down at that point, and I just stood up off the curb, and I started walking to the ambulance. I remember that I saw the ambulance and the paramedic grabbed a body bag out of the back, because they just assumed from the call that I was dead. I walked over and there’s literally a body bag on the ground. I’m like full Walking Dead, right? Because my whole face is like gnarled up with blood and stuff and the paramedic looks at me, and he’s like, ‘Sir, you’re not supposed to be walking.’ I’m sure I was in shock at this point, and I was like, ‘Do you want me to go sit back down?’ He said, ‘No, no, no, you’re already over here. I just want to stabilize your neck before you do anything else.’ I was like, okay. He’s like, ‘Unless you want to walk to the hospital.’ I was like, ‘How far is the hospital?’ He’s like, ‘Oh, it’s about three miles.’ I was like, ‘No, I’ll take the ride.’ I’m sure he was teasing me at that point, but I was in so much shock that I didn’t know what was going on. Then everybody I talked to after that, the emergency room docs, the surgeon, all the doctors were basically like people don’t typically live, because I wasn’t wearing a helmet.”
“We’ve talked back and forth on whether or not that actually saved my life or not, and I’m not advocating that you shouldn’t wear a helmet on a bike. I’m just saying mine, one in a million chance, because I hit the window with my head and there’s a chance if I was wearing a helmet it would have been bigger, and I could have hit the cross guard over the top of the car. That might have snapped my neck. It might not have, I don’t know. I know that my dad has always told me that I give my guardian angel the hardest time, and I almost outran him that day. But, yeah, he was looking out. There was a reason that I survived that, and a reason that I was there. So then the doctors were like, ‘Yeah, dude, you should be dead. You should have died in the physics of this accident, usually this is a fatal accident. There’s no way you’re going to wrestle again, your arm is completely shattered. It’s destroyed. Everything from the elbow to shoulder is just destroyed, you’re going to be lucky to lift weights.’ Six months later I was wrestling again. I had two plates, 18 pins and screws and, I don’t know, six or seven hour surgery, putting my arm back together.”
On possibly not returning after his recent neck injury:
“Yeah, absolutely. So I got in a freak accident, I landed a suplex, I got dropped directly on my head, just one of those things. I think we kind of say it without really thinking about it that in wrestling any match could be our last, or any move could be our last, or whatever. We kind of don’t think about the weight of that. I was on a live event, non-televised, just a match that we don’t really think about or we take for granted. Doing a move, taking a suplex that I had taken 1000s of times in my career. Didn’t think once about it. For whatever reason, on that day, I over-rotated and landed directly in my head. When it happened, I knew I was hurt, but I didn’t know how bad I was hurt. I thought it was something that was in my trap, and everything kind of locked up. So I was treating it muscular. It got worse.
We got MRIs, saw there was herniation in the disc. I kept wrestling, because I was like, well we can just keep treating this with PT. I was talking with doctors. I was doing PT like 3, 4, 5, times a week. I was getting dry needling, scraping, everything, trying to mitigate all the stuff I was doing. I was doing electric therapy and stuff like that, trying to stimulate the nerves, trying to doing everything I could to avoid surgery. But at the same time, I was wrestling every single week, I didn’t miss a match. Then I took another bad fall, just got tumbled up going over the ropes one time and it actually didn’t even hit my neck. I hit my elbow on the apron on the way over, and then three days later, my tricep disappeared, my right lat shrank half in size, and then my right pec flattened within days. I came in, and I was terrified. So I came into work that week, and we were scheduled for a match, actually against New Day. Ironically enough, we were scheduled to wrestle The New Day. I sat down with medical, I sat down with Triple H and everybody, the consensus was, ‘Hey, you’re going to Birmingham tomorrow. You’re not flying home, cancel plans. We’re flying you from TV to Birmingham.’ I saw Dr Cordover. We did try a nerve block thing, because he was like, hey, maybe we can reverse some of this. So we tried that before cutting and then that didn’t have the effect that anyone wanted. So we did neck surgery but it was immediate, it was fast. It was like, bang, bang, bang.”
That sounds scary.
“It was. They’re going through the front now. So it’s ACDF surgery. It’s at level six, seven. Ivar’s got two levels. So his is actually the one above and mine, but our symptoms are totally different, even down to the fingers, our nerve pathway. The way that my nerve pathway was affected was totally different than his. So it’s funny that we both have surgically repaired necks, but our injuries couldn’t be more separate. But yeah, I’ve always been a fast healer. After the motorcycle wreck I was back in six months, so in my brain I was like, I’ll be back in six months. I’ve done this before, it’s fine. Six months came, I went for the scan, still didn’t have full fusion, seven months no fusion, eight months no fusion, nine months no fusion. Now I’m getting scared. What happens if this doesn’t fully fuse? What is life without wrestling? How does this go on? Then, thank God, finally it did fuse. We showed full fusion, I was able to start training again, get back really quickly. But then it ended up being 13 months, I think, from surgery that I was out. There were definitely some times of this might be the end. So I was thinking, I’m texting with Ivar, and talking to my wife every day, how do we go from here? What happens now? So it’s sobering to be struck there. So, then having the motorcycle wreck, then having the neck surgery. There’s all of this like Hey, dude, don’t take anything for granted. Not a single flight, not a single match, not a single move, not a single day.”
On The Viking Experience:
“Our first day on the main roster. We had never actually physically met Vince McMahon, but we went and stood outside his office to go and plead our case. Because I was ringside, this is fun. I was ringside, and I see our music starts playing, and it’s ‘The War Raiders’ up on the screen, and then the logo changes, and ‘Berserkerz’ comes up. Now I’m looking like, oh man. Then that goes away, and ‘The Viking Experience’ comes up. I look and I’m like, Oh no! So I walk up and Hunter was actually ringside, he’s texting, and I walk up to him and I was like, ‘Hey, dude, is this a rib?’ He just shakes his head and goes, ‘I wish.’ I’m like, ‘What do we do?’ He’s like, ‘Well, you gotta go talk to Vince.’ All right, cool. So Ivar’s plane was late, he gets to the building, I tell him, ‘We got to go talk to Vince. This is bad.’ So we go get in line, we stand, we make our case. Said, Viking Experience sounds like a Disney ride, it sounds something like a small world, the tea cups and all that stuff. The Viking Experience, bring your kids, right?
So, we pitched that case, and Vince was like, ‘Well, that makes sense, but we don’t have time to get that through legal.’ Because we asked to be Viking Raiders because we heard, a little birdie told us, when we changed from War Machine to War Raiders they were really stuck on Raiders. So all of the names had Raiders in them. This time, Vince was really stuck on us being Vikings. He loved Vikings. Little known fact, Vince was a big fan of the history show Vikings, which is probably why we got called up in the first place, because he was like, ‘Hey, we got Vikings on TV? Bring them up!’ So he wanted us to be the Viking something, right? And the problem is, Vikings are a very popular thing in culture right now. So nothing could get past legal, nothing could get trademarked, nothing could get whatever. Viking Experience was shockingly free, because no one wanted to be that, including us.
So we asked to be Viking Raiders. By this point, it’s like, 7:30. The show’s going on at 8. He was like, ‘Well, we can’t get this cleared through legal at this point. So what we’ll do is, you’ll be the Viking Experience today, and if we really don’t like it, then we’ll be Viking Raiders next week. No press is bad press. So worst case scenario, people will talk. They’ll be talking about you.’ So we’re like, okay, and as we’re leaving the office, kind of in an afterthought, he goes, ‘Oh and by the way, one of you is Ivar, and one of you is Erik, I don’t care who.’ We just walked out. I looked and we were maybe two steps outside of his office, Ivar grabs my arm for real, and he’s like, ‘Please don’t make me be Erik. My brother’s name is Erik.’ The bully in my brain for like, three seconds, I was like man, I really should be mean. No, okay, fine, you could be Ivar. But it was close to us being the other way. I was like I don’t know how they came up with these names. Someone in creative might have just Googled famous Viking names or something. Because I did that afterwards, trying to figure out where they come up with these names. The first one was Erik the Red. Then it was Ivar the Boneless. I was like, Oh, cool. So it’s literally just Erik, Ivar. ‘You guys are Vikings?’ Eric and Ivar.”
Tickets for the first-ever two-night SummerSlam at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey went on general sale this morning at Ticketmaster.com.
Only combo tickets are on sale, with single-day tickets scheduled to be released later.
Half the stadium remained off limits and closed but those seats could obviously open up depending on the demand. It’s unclear how many tickets were sold so far but there are several sections already full, while others, especially floor seats, remain largely unsold due to the high prices.
The lowest-priced tickets so far are $189 plus taxes and fees and the most expensive are $4,014 plus taxes and fees for ringside.
No big stage is expected, but a long aisle is present. MetLife Stadium is one of the largest stadiums in the United States which can seat up to 80,000 fans.
Long story short, even with half the stadium closed, it’s going to take a lot of effort to sell out the current inventory.
John Cena, Cody Rhodes, Roman Reigns, CM Punk, Tiffany Stratton, Rhea Ripley, and Bianca Belair are featured on the first poster for the show.
Mercedes Mone has launched a new, $99.99-a-month texting service for fans where she is advertising that just like friends, fans can now text her directly and privately.
“I’m so excited to finally be able to connect this way. Sign up and text me now,” Mone writes on the website.
The website promotes exclusivity, one-on-one, and personal encounters once fans get her private number “for just $99.99 a month.”
Mone has been very vocal about fans approaching her outside of wrestling settings, so it’s interesting that she is now willing to interact with fans via text.
While thousands of tickets were sold for the upcoming AEWxNJPW: Forbidden Door pay-per-view in London, the O2 Arena is not closed to being sold out and some sections have not been opened for sale yet.
Tickets went on sale to the general public this morning on AXS.CO.UK, with the cheapest prices at £53 and going all the way to £949 for ringside VIP packages. Other ringside seats are being sold at £570 including all fees.
Tickets for the Dynamite and Collision at the OVO Hydro in Glasgow also went on public sale. Tickets start from £30 and all the way up to £402.60 for ringside plus more for a VIP ringside ticket. Half the arena is closed off so far and tickets have fared worse than Forbidden Door for now.
Ticket prices are also notably more expensive than usual for AEW, who look like they took out a page out from WWE.
Dynamite, which did not air live coast-to-coast this week, drew 629,000 viewers, up 108,000 viewers from last week’s almost-record low. Dynamite had a 0.16 rating in 18-49, up 0.02 from the previous episode and was #5 on the top 50 cable chart for the night. The viewers do not include those on Max. (Ratings credit: Programming Insider)
Alicia Fox, now going by her real name of Victoria Crawford, made her TNA Wrestling debut last night and came out with Robert Stone.
Stone introduced Crawford as the new Deputy Director of Authority and immediately gave her a TNA Knockouts title match at the upcoming TNA Under Siege event against champion Masha Slamovich.
Crawford spent nearly 17 years under contract with WWE starting in 2006 and is a former one-time Divas champion. She was also prominently featured on the Total Divas reality show on E! when it started in 2013, being featured as a guest and main character in eight of the nine seasons.
The 38-year-old last wrestled on April 18 for a GCW show in Las Vegas during WrestleMania weekend. She returned to the ring in 2024 after two years away.
AEW today announced that the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia will host an exclusive multi-week residency of AEW Dynamite and AEW Collision, marking the first time in history that AEW events have been held at the historic venue, previously known as the ECW Arena.
The residency dates include Dynamite on August 27, September 3, and September 10, Collision on August 30, September 6, and September 11, and the ROH Death Before Dishonor show on September 5.
“We are thrilled to bring AEW Dynamite and AEW Collision to the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia from August 27 – September 11,” said AEW CEO, GM and Head of Creative Tony Khan. “This residency has been years in the making, highlighted by an overwhelming demand from both fans and media alike for this legendary venue to host AEW events. I look forward to returning to the 2300 Arena for the first time since I was 13 years old and bring our passionate fans in Philadelphia an incredible few weeks of AEW shows this summer.”
Ticket information for AEW Dynamite, AEW Collision and ROH Death Before Dishonor at 2300 Arena will be announced in the near future.
WWE made several cuts from their team at the Stamford headquarters yesterday, with a dozen of people reportedly fired.
PWInsider.com says the biggest name released was Christine Lubrano, who held the title of Senior Vice President of Creating Writing Operations for the past four years.
Creative and photography were the casualties in these rounds of cuts, with more departures not being excluded.
Post-WrestleMania firings have become an annual thing almost, and the merge of many positions with the UFC under TKO did not help things.
Robert Stone returned to TNA Wrestling last night on the live episode of Impact and was unveiled as the person who will be “monitoring” the performance of TNA’s authority figure, Santino Marella.
Before joining WWE, Stone spent seven years with TNA where he is a former TNA TV, X Division, and Tag Team champion, wrestling under the name of Robbie E.
On NXT, Stone is an assistant to General Manager Ava along with Stevie Turner and also does commentary for the Evolve program on Tube.
NXT this week drew 674,000 viewers, down 12,000 viewers from last week’s show which was the post-Stand & Deliver episode. The show had a 0.15 rating in 18-49, down 0.02 from last week. This was the third least-watched episode of NXT of 2025 so far. (Ratings credit: Programming Insider)
WWE today announced that Crown Jewel will be taking place from Perth, Australia in October as part of a three-day WWE takeover of the city.
This is the first time that Crown Jewel is held outside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia since its inception in 2018.
Crown Jewel: Perth will take place at RAC Arena on Saturday, October 11. The venue will also host Friday Night SmackDown on Friday, October 10, and Monday Night Raw on Monday, October 13.
The premium live event will pit champion against champion in both the men’s and the women’s divisions. Cody Rhodes and Liv Morgan were the inaugural Crown Jewel champions last year.
WWE star Nattie Neidhart appeared on today’s episode of SiriusXM’s The Nikki and Brie Show.
During the episode, Nattie Neidhart discusses her wrestling roots, her husband TJ Wilson’s support and his behind-the-scenes role in shaping the WWE women’s revolution, Chris Bey’s recovery journey, getting catfished by a fake Jason Mamoa and much more. Nikki Garcia also reveals how she is preparing for her WWE comeback.
Nattie Neidhart reveals that TJ Wilson barely made it to her Bloodsport match (6:36-7:24)
Brie Garcia: Was he there at your match last night?
Nattie Neidhart: Yes. He was in a production meeting. They were doing a meeting for the weekend, for the events for WrestleMania, and so they had one more meeting and TJ was like, “I’ve got 20 minutes,” and I was on in 20 minutes. He was still in the meeting. He had literally 20 minutes to make it to my fight and I was so worried that he wasn’t gonna come and right before I walked through the curtain, TJ was there.
Nikki Garcia: Oh my gosh. I have chills. Where were the cameras for that?
Nattie Neidhart: I gave him the biggest hug and then as soon as I hugged him, my music hit. I was so scared. I had already, in my mind, I was like, “He’ll just watch some footage and it’ll be fine. He doesn’t need to be here for it,” and then he came. I was so happy. He left the meeting. The meeting was still going on. He was like, “Sorry guys. I’ve gotta go.”
Nattie Neidhart discusses Chris Bey’s recovery & thinks he will wrestle again (20:18-21:00)
Nattie Neidhart: You guys know about Chris Bey and you know about everything that Chris has been going through with his injury. We met up with Chris Bey and his girlfriend the other day and we have been keeping in touch with Chris because TJ, when he broke his neck, it was just, you need all the love and support you can get and you need it every single day, and so we met up with Chris and Chris, you know, it was so cool because TJ was able to bring his story to Chris and Chris is walking. Chris was paralyzed from the neck down and, you know, Chris shared all of that and he’s been very open about like he couldn’t move and now he’s walking and now I have full faith in Chris Bey that he will wrestle again. I think he will. I think he absolutely will.
Nattie Neidhart says she’s in the best shape she’s ever been in her life (23:17-23:52)
Nattie Neidhart: I just feel so good. I wish, it’s funny because people say to me, “When are you gonna hang it up?” I’m gonna hang it up when Randy Orton hangs it up, when Rey Mysterio hangs it up. When I look at Randy, Randy Orton is in the best shape of his life. Rey Mysterio is in the best shape of his life. What I love right now in WWE is that we’re not letting a number define what people can do and that’s the great thing about this era. It’s like, if you are good at what you do, you go in there and rock it. I actually feel like I’m in better shape than I’ve ever been in my life and knock on wood, I wake up every morning pain free.
Nikki Garcia reveals how she is preparing for WWE comeback (35:56-36:29)
Nikki Garcia: I’ve been slowly getting back into lifting heavier to prep for this comeback and, you know, I told myself that exactly. A little bit at a time, Nicole. You’re not gonna get super strong overnight and I’ve been doing that, and I had texted my sister and my mom last week and I’m like, “I went up 15 pounds.” I was so happy, and I didn’t even realize it, but I was just doing a little bit at a time, and then all of a sudden, here I am, and it feels just so good and that’s why I just stick with it. Don’t over expect. Just do a little bit.
The Nikki & Brie Show hosted by Nikki & Brie Garcia is available anytime on the SiriusXM app. New episodes every Monday and Thursday. Listen to the full episode HERE.
