WWE: LA Knight on Situation with Drew McIntyre Over McIntyre’s Frustrations with Him From Royal Rumble 2025, Natalya on Her Plans to Want to Wrestle Everywhere & Some Big Announcements Coming Soon, More News

LA Knight Comments on Situation with Drew McIntyre Over McIntyre’s Frustrations with Him From Royal Rumble 2025

As noted before, Drew McIntyre was involved in a backstage incident at this past February’s WWE Royal Rumble 2025 event. McIntyre was furious over his issues with LA Knight messing up the original plans for his elimination spot from the Men’s Royal Rumble match that was meant to be a major kickoff moment for his WrestleMania 41 program with Damian Priest.

A recent episode of the Gorilla Position podcast featured Knight as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Knight’s thoughts about McIntyre’s backstage incident at WWE’s Royal Rumble event and if there was any “heat” he had over the situation.

“I’ve always got heat. When don’t I have heat? At the same time, I’m too old for heat. I don’t deal with that… Well, he (Drew McIntyre) had to leave because the show was over. Yeah, at some point, everybody’s gotta go home. He stormed out? I didn’t even know. No idea. I got to the back, I got to the monitor, I saw the rest of the deal and — no. Well, he was already back there before I was. His ass got tossed already so, no, yeah, I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know anything about it until I was sitting at home Sunday night and then somebody sent me an article and I was like, ‘Ah! That’s interesting…’ Look, I can’t tell you the inner workings here but there were some conversations had. I’ll tell you that.”

Transcript h/t: PostWrestling.com

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Natalya Comments on Her Current Plans to Want to Wrestle Everywhere & Some Big Announcements Coming Soon

A recent episode of the Insight with Chris Van Vliet podcast featured Natalya as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Natalya’s thoughts about WWE becoming more open to letting their talents wrestle for other companies and her wanting to continue to prove herself and earn her spot in WWE’s Women’s division.

“When I signed my new deal with WWE — I signed it last June — and I thought to myself as long as I continue to stay in WWE, I have to always remember to keep proving myself. I can’t just rest on the fact that I have a world record for the most matches, or the most wins, or the most this, or the most that, or that I had a really great match with Charlotte at TakeOver [in 2014]. To me, when you continue to work in WWE, you always have to keep proving yourself no matter what it is that you’re doing, even if you’re not working at WWE.

So I kind of made that vow to myself that if I want to continue working here, I have to not only prove myself and not only fight to be in this division, but also fight to prove my detractors wrong. And so that’s why I thought about myself wrestling elsewhere. I thought, ‘Hmm, I wonder what it would be like. I wonder what it would look like for me to wrestle elsewhere.’ And I want to wrestle everywhere. That’s the thing, I want to wrestle everywhere. That’s what I love about my ring. My ring is really kind of like a forbidden door. The Dungeon that TJ and I have. I love all these different people coming in and just bringing passion, whether it’s Joe Hendry, whether it’s Kevin Knight, whether it’s [Man Like] DeReiss, whether it’s Riho, B-Fab comes in, [Angelo] Dawkins, Apollo [Crews], all these different people come to our ring, whether they’re on the independents, they come from all these different places. And that’s what I want to do. I want to wrestle everywhere. And I love that WWE is starting to do that.”

Natalya also gave her thoughts about recent reports concerning WWE’s women being underutilized and some big announcements for her coming soon.

“Here’s my thing, and it kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier. I was talking to my mom, I talk to my mom about everything, and I was saying sometimes it’s so easy, especially nowadays. We all have a platform. If you’re on Twitter, you’re on Instagram, you’re on TikTok, you’re on social media, you have a platform. That’s the cool thing about this day and age is that everybody has a voice. It is so easy. It would be so easy for me to go on social media and be like, ‘I’m mad about this, and I’m mad about that, and I should have this and I should have that…’ I would have loved to have been the first-ever Women’s IC Champion. I would have loved that. For me, and this is the big thing is that there just has to be the right story.I think everybody wants everything now, we’re living in a world of instant gratification where we want everything right now.

So there’s always going to be times where people feel like we should have this, and the Women’s Division should do that, and that there should be this. I do think that booking a weekly TV show, it’s not easy, especially because there’s lots of things that happen behind the scenes that people just don’t know about. Somebody gets hurt, or somebody can’t make it or this isn’t where we’re going for the big picture. Of course, I would love to do more in WWE, but I also want there to be the right story. Especially being somebody that has been in WWE for 18 years, I would love to do more, but I also understand that timing is everything, so I have faith that the right story will come. Actually, I feel like we’re right around the corner from some big announcements being made, especially with what I’m doing, I’m leaving you guys on such a cliffhanger, those stories will come to fruition.”

Transcript h/t: F4WOnline.com, Fightful.com

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WWE News & Notes

Tuesday’s WWE NXT show at the Performance Center in Orlando, Florida featured Thea Hail making a surprise return. Hail was revealed as the final competitor for the Vacant NXT Women’s North American Championship Ladder Qualifiers. Hail defeated Karmen Petrovic to secure the final spot for the Vacant NXT Women’s North American Championship Ladder match at NXT Stand & Deliver 2025.

Game Changer Wrestling recently announced a time change for their WWE ID Championship Tournament event for The Collective on Wednesday in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was announced that the start time for their event was pushed back by one hour from its original 6PM PST to a new start time of 5PM PST.

WWE CCO Paul “Triple H” Levesque recently released the official poster for this year’s Backlash event on May 10th at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis, Missouri. This poster features Randy Orton as the sole WWE Superstar shown.

Fightful Select’s Sean Ross Sapp reported that his sources stated that WWE officials had cut out a lot of their original plans for the WWE Tag Team Championship #1 Contender Gauntlet match at this past Friday’s WWE SmackDown show. Sapp reported that WWE officials were cutting out stuff planned for the match while it was actually going on in the ring.

WWE recently revealed the next match in their on-going countdown of their Top 50 matches in WrestleMania history. The 2nd spot was the No Disqualification Submission match of Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Bret “The Hitman” Hart from WrestleMania 13.

WWE also recently released a new video to their official YouTube channel focusing on the Triple Threat match of CM Punk vs. Seth Rollins vs. Roman Reigns for the main event of Night 1 of WrestleMania 41 on April 19th in Las Vegas, Nevada.

WWE also recently released one new video to their WCW Vault channel on YouTube. This new video was a WCW United States Heavyweight Championship match of Eddie Guerrero vs. Konnan (c) from WCW Uncensored 1996.

WWE also recently released two new videos to their WWE Vault channel on YouTube. The first new video was a “WWE Legends relive their WrestleMania moments: WWE Retrospective.” The second new video was a singles match of Triple H vs. Sheamus from WWE WrestleMania XXVI.

WWE also recently released two new videos to their NXT Vault channel on YouTube. The first new video was the full September 4, 2014 episode of WWE NXT. The second new video was an Empty Arena match of Johnny Gargano vs. Tommaso Ciampa from the April 8, 2020 episode of WWE NXT.

In a recent interview with Casino.org, WWE Hall of Famer Kurt Angle gave his thoughts about the upcoming CM Punk vs. Seth Rollins vs. Roman Reigns match for the Night 1 of WrestleMania 41 and how WWE splitting WrestleMania into a two-night show has become much more tolerable for fans to watch. Angle stated “That’s going to be a great match, potentially the best match of the night, maybe even better than Rhodes v Cena. I think Roman Reigns will get the job done, but I expect it to be one of the matches of WrestleMania. As for WrestleMania’s set up, it used to be really tough to get it all done in one night. I’m glad they changed it to two nights. It’s more money for the company, and even though I know the fans love it, it’s asking a lot with seven hours in one sitting for the fans. It’s much more tolerable for the fans to watch in a 3.5 hour sitting. Doing it in a seven-hour stint, that’s a lot. When I wrestled Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 19, don’t get me the wrong, the fans were great, but they were tired by the time we made the ring! They weren’t as excited as they perhaps should have been, it was like ‘and here’s the next one!’ Overall, I think the WWE made the right call splitting it into two nights.“