Becky Lynch looks back on the one-year story of her on-screen program with Bianca Belair.
At the 2022 SummerSlam Premium Live Event, Bianca Belair bested Becky Lynch to retain the Raw Women’s Championship. It was one year ago that Lynch returned to WWE at SummerSlam and defeated Belair in under 30 seconds to become SmackDown Women’s Champion.
Becky is glad that she and Bianca were able to make their story come full circle like that and she dove into it while speaking to Ryan Satin on the Out of Character podcast.
Lynch brought up that prior to the match at WrestleMania 38, creative wanted her to face Bianca at one of the Premium Live Events leading up to Mania. Lynch recounted trying to delay that and suggested different opponents for Day 1, Royal Rumble and Elimination Chamber.
Yes! [I’m glad I got to go full circle with Bianca Belair] Because that was a fight, because we’re gonna take it off her, 26 seconds, that’s the only way people are gonna boo Becky, right? If we squash her, make it feel like she’s really, really got the bad end of the stick but then, of course, it being WWE and the creative always changing, they’re wanting to run it back all the time, all the time so it was like, ‘No, no! Let’s not do it at Day 1. How about we do Liv at Day 1? That would be awesome. She’s got a lot of momentum, she’s very good. We got something here. Let’s run with that’ but then, ‘Okay, let’s do it at Royal Rumble.’ ‘Well, maybe, how about we do Dou because she’s also awesome? We gotta get her running, she’s awesome’ and then, ‘Oh, let’s do it at Crown Jewel.’ ‘Well, you know who I’ve always wanted to work?’ And so that we could get back to it at WrestleMania and do it in the best way possible. We were hoping that-that would be the big blow off and that’s the end of the story but circumstances happened and we had to keep it going which I’m really happy we did because I do think it was a beautiful end to the story, you know? We began with a handshake at SummerSlam, we ended with a handshake at SummerSlam. It was a year of me being an asshole and coming back around to being the man and so, I feel like it was — we don’t often do long-term storytelling like that and often when we do, it’s by accident [Lynch laughed] and so, but we had it in our minds that we wanted to push forward, especially for that WrestleMania moment and then everything that happened afterwards wasn’t ideal but actually ended up being ideal and so, I’m real proud of that year. I’m real freaking proud of that year.
Lynch is currently sidelined with a shoulder injury that she suffered at SummerSlam. Becky said the injury occurred in the first two-to-three minutes of the match.
Yeah, yeah, I think like the first two minutes or the first three minutes or something [was when my shoulder injury happened at SummerSlam]. Yeah, yeah and then I was like, maybe I dislocated it, maybe it’ll click back in its place and then by the end of the match, I was like, ah, I’m out, I’m out. I’m gonna be out for a little while.
At the conclusion of Lynch versus Belair at SummerSlam, they shook hands. Belair was then confronted by the trio of Bayley, Dakota Kai and IYO SKY. Lynch stood side-by-side with the Raw Women’s Champion and they further made amends the next night on Raw.
Lynch said Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque approached her and asked for her thoughts about being a heel. He expressed his thought that they were swimming upstream with her as a heel and she agreed.
No, no [I wasn’t surprised that I was shifted back into a babyface role] because I talked to Hunter a little bit before and he was like, ‘How do you feel about being a heel?’ And I was like, ‘Honestly, it’s fun, I like it. I feel like I’m maybe more naturally inclined to be a babyface. I think people like me better as a babyface.’ Obviously, clearly, I’m doing my job if they don’t like me as a heel. I’m just great lads, I’m just great and so, he’s like, ‘I feel like we’re swimming upstream keeping you as a heel’ and I, ‘Yeah, I agree’ and so then the creative was laid out and I was like, ‘Yeah, that sounds awesome. Hell yeah.’ Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.
Belair was pinned by Bayley at Clash at the Castle and on this week’s episode of Raw, Belair offered Bayley a title match on the spot.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit ‘Out of Character with Ryan Satin’ with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
