Rumor Roundup: Big Raw change, Trish Stratus plan, Ariel Helwani/Tony Khan beef, more!

Speculating on the rumors surrounding pro wrestling is a favored pastime of many fans, perhaps second only to actually watching the matches. In this daily column, we take a look at the latest rumors being churned out by the pro wrestling rumor mill.

Important reminder: Rumors are just that — rumors. None of this has been confirmed as fact, it’s just circulating around the pro wrestling rumor mill. We track rumor accuracy in a weekly feature called Rumor Look Back you can find here. Remember, take it all with a grain of salt.

Rumors for the Day:

• Trish Stratus was backstage at Raw last night in Ottawa, according to Fightful Select. Stratus was apparently supposed to be Becky Lynch’s second for the segment with Damage CTRL, but left before it was filmed. Asked what happened, sources told the site it was a “creative change”.
• WRKD Wrestling tweeted that “Trish is still on the way” and said she’ll be “working a storyline she’s wanted to for quite some time.”
• After Ariel Helwani’s appearance on last Friday’s SmackDown, there was a Twitter exchange between Tony Khan & Helwani that everyone agrees had its roots in Helwani’s criticism of Khan after their October 2022 interview. Fightful said the tweets were a topic of conversation backstage at WWE before Elimination Chamber.
• Helwani joked on his The MMA Hour show Monday that he “popped the boys in the back” with his tweet toward Khan, and that when he saw Michael Cole before Saturday’s PLE Cole told him, “Just wait until you hear how I introduce you.”
• Discussing the situation on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer said that “the stuff” his WWE sources have been saying about Tony Khan for the last three years is “so bad”. In particular, Meltzer thinks Helwani calling Khan “the snowman” made him “the star of stars to them [WWE].”
• The MMA reporter defended his spots on WWE’s shows in his hometown of Montreal by saying he doesn’t cover wrestling as a journalist, and just appeared last weekend to have fun doing something that brings him joy. Helwani also hinted that he “could tell you a lot of other stuff about that interview [with Tony Khan] that we didn’t show, about how weird and bizarre that whole thing was — but I’m not gonna do that.”

If you have heard of any interesting rumors that you’d like to add, feel free to post them in the comments section below. Just remember they are rumors and not confirmed as fact, so please take them as such. And check our weekly Rumor Look Back here to keep track of how often rumors turn out to be correct.