More on Bayley, Io Shirai, & Dakota Kai Returns at WWE SummerSlam 2022

Saturday’s WWE SummerSlam 2022 event in Nashville, Tennessee featured the surprise returns of Bayley, Io Shirai, and Dakota Kai. Following the RAW Women’s Championship match, Bayley made her surprise return to confront Bianca Belair and revealed that she had backup in the form of Shirai and Kai.

PWInsider’s Mike Johnson reported that his sources confirmed that Shirai will be going by the new ring name of Iyo Sky going forward and that was not a botch by Corey Graves on commentary. Johnson reported that the source of confusion revolved around Shirai’s entrance video still had her old name listed.

Fightful Select reported that their sources stated that prior to Paul “Triple H” Levesque taking over as head of creative, WWE officials did not have any plans for Shirai in NXT following her injury. These same sources also stated that Shirai’s contract was set to expire soon before her official call-up was made. It was also reported that while they have yet to confirm that Shirai recently signed a new contract, one source spoken to stated “it appears so.”

In regards to Kai, it was reported that several sources spoken to stated that she would be someone that Levesque would “make a priority” to bring back to the company. Those spoken to stated that while she had participated in several dark match tryouts for the main roster before her release this past April, several writers had been confused over why she was left out of last year’s WWE Draft pools nor was she told of the creative plans for her at the time. It was reported that multiple companies were interested in signing her after her release but talks with AEW did not go past the initial stage. Several members of AEW’s roster reportedly had pushed for her to join the company and it is currently not known why she did not in the end. WWE talent spoken to stated that they believed she would be back soon due to her being seen training at WWE’s Performance Center and Flatbacks for the past several weeks.

In regards to Bayley’s new faction, it was reported that this group had been pitched prior to Kai’s release but Vince McMahon rejected the idea. It was also reported that there were other versions of this faction pitched that included Raquel Rodriguez and Kay Lee Ray prior to them being called up to the main roster or given a new gimmick.