LA Knight and Brock Lesnar match plans change ahead of WrestleMania

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DENVER, COLORADO - NOVEMBER 28: LA Knight make's his entrance during SmackDown at Ball Arena on November 28, 2025 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Craig Melvin/WWE via Getty Images) | WWE via Getty Images Welcome to the weekly Rumor Look Back, where we look at the rumors from six months ago and see which played out as originally stated. Let’s jump right to it. February 16, 2026 Per the Wrestling Observer, Brock Lesnar was originally planned to work with LA Knight at WrestleMania 42 before plans shifted. Knight would have gotten squashed. Like I could have seen that going so poorly he wouldn’t recover. If Lesnar doesn’t like you, you’re not going to look good. And I just get the feeling Lesnar would not be an LA Knight fan. There’s footage making the rounds claiming to be Seth Rollins training recently, leading to speculation on his status for WrestleMania 42. He returned by 42. For what it’s worth, The Hardy Boyz told Metro UK they are in “constant negotiations with WWE” and plan to do more with the company in the future. They haven’t really done anything with them. (0/1) The Observer said AEW being partially owned by WBD was something “we understood was the case for years but nobody had ever said it on record.” I wonder how that could complicate things if WBD didn’t want to renew them next time. Fightful Select notes The IInspiration’s deals with AEW are multi-year contracts and their signing had been done roughly one month ago. They’re almost never on AEW TV, though are behind that ROH paywall. Some tweets have made the rounds claiming AEW was giving away free tickets to House Rules Australia. They usually sell the Grand Slam Australia show pretty well. February 17, 2026 WrestleVotes notes that with her finger surgery, Bianca Belair is expected to miss WrestleMania 42. Her pregnancy also contributed to that. (1/1) They also say changing WrestleMania plans led to Royce Keys being taken off television after his big debut at Royal Rumble. Original plans apparently called for a program with Damian Priest. They teased that for a bit but never really went there. One more from Votes: Adam Copeland is expected back in AEW by Double or Nothing this Spring. They did. They won the titles at Double or Nothing. (1/1) David Finlay’s contract with New Japan Pro Wrestling has expired and he’s a free agent, says Fightful Select. He’s also drawing interest everywhere. He ended up in AEW. For what it’s worth, Olympic track and field athlete Ana Da Silva said on Instagram that she is going to a WWE tryout next week. I don’t think anything came of this. February 18, 2026 The mystery WWE crate to be opened at Elimination Chamber will not be Chris Jericho, says Fightful Select. It was Danhausen. (1/1) In fact, Jericho is still under contract with AEW and the belief is he had his contract frozen when he took time away in 2025. We don’t know the specifics, but we do know that he re-signed with AEW. Self Made Pro claims there was a creative meeting held within WWE for SmackDown where it was decided everyone on the SmackDown roster needed something to do on last week’s show. Everyone has something to do? What a novel idea. More from Self Made Pro: Kenny Omega vs. Swerve Strickland was originally planned for AEW’s Revolution event but Omega has other commitments in Japan. I’m not sure what the plan for Swerve going into All In is. Looks like he may be a vehicle to debut the New Day given he’s thrown his hat in the trios ring but doesn’t have any partners. Not that I would agree with the New Day entering the trios team and not just debuting to stare down the winners of Cope & Cage vs. the Young Bucks. Xavier Woods has a shoulder injury he is getting addressed now, says PW Insider. I think we’ll be seeing him & Kofi in a week. Ronda Rousey told ESPN that she pitched her fight with Gina Carano to Dana White but it “didn’t exactly work out with the UFC.” That ended up being a very short fight on Netflix. February 19, 2026 AJ Styles was at the WWE Performance Center yesterday, per PW Insider. There was no word on why. We know he wasn’t setting up the ring. Bryan Alvarez tweeted that WWE’s having SmackDown talent come in for Raw’s Styles tribute next Monday. Yes, but more importantly, his former tag partner Omos was there. (1/1) Kenny Omega’s write-off on Dynamite last night should cover about a month. Fightful Select reports Omega might make an appearance at Revolution, but he won’t wrestle on the PPV. Wrestling Observer specified that Kenny’s commitment in Japan that week is the Capcom Cup at Ryōgoku Kokugikan. That is accurate – he made an appearance but did not wrestle. (1/1) Seth Rollins said on Club ShayShay that he and CM Punk obviously have a working relationship, and “there there might be an opportunity for a reconciliation” with Punk personally after they’ve both retired. But he can’t separate “the CM Punk that there is now from the CM Punk that was a really rotten friend to me ten years ago“, and neither man has time to address old wounds right now. I sometimes wonder if wrestlers are friendlier than they make it known in the media so to play up the tension. Of course, some just don’t like each other. In their confirmation that WWE tryouts are happening this week at the Performance Center in Orlando, Fightful said there’s been a “heavy independent wrestling presence” at recent tryouts, but “some” invitees have no wrestling experience. They’ve done well with some folks with no prior experience, such as Oba Femi. Fightful also said that they haven’t heard about anyone who was signed out of last month’s tryouts at the PC. Some who were told they won’t be signed are sharing about the experience already though, like LSU gymnast K.J. Johnson, who told New Orleans’ WGNO that WWE suggested wrestling schools to her and invited her to come back to a tryout this summer. I wonder if she’s going to follow up on that. February 20, 2026 WrestleVotes heard that NXT star Sol Ruca will get a “slight character refresh” for when WWE calls her up to the main roster soon. This includes a new entrance song. Fightful Select notes that she is expected to be in Chicago around the time of WWE’s Elimination Chamber event at the end of this month. It looks like they changed her music (though both are generic surfer songs so not much effort in it). I don’t know if her character has really changed though. Claire put it best in the Cageside offices by noting “Honestly the biggest presentation change she’s experienced on her way to the main roster is breaking up with her kayfabe girlfriend.” (1/2) According to Bloomberg, TKO CEO Ari Emanuel is “trying to turn Pat McAfee into the next Sylvester Stallone.” I think he’d need to be in a movie first, though it looks like that box is going to be checked off this year. He looks ridiculous in this picture. Hopefully it’s not an indication of his acting. Wrestling Observer Radio’s Dave Meltzer was told that a large portion of this week’s episode of AEW Dynamite was rewritten late due to “some injuries” and “a lot of illnesses.” It was “a skeleton crew in a lot of ways.” The belief is that the sickness was spread at last week’s Dynamite taping. The Beast Mortos was specifically named as one of the replacement wrestlers on this show. It’s tough with a flu passes through a work place. BodySlam.net claims that WWE is expected to return to Saudi Arabia for a Night of Champions PLE on June 27. Accurate. (1/1) Earlier this week, WWE filed for trademarks on the names “Tristan Angels” and “Dorian Van Dux.” As far as video games are concerned, the company also filed for trademarks on the terms WWE Eras Collide, WWE Domination, and WWE Generations. The names have already been handed out. Dorian Van Dux is a pretty bad name. Maybe he’ll go by DVD and his whole gimmick will be convincing people to buy physical media. Even though AEW commentators speculated that Tomohiro Ishii suffered a torn hamstring on Dynamite, Meltzer indicated that he is “not hurt badly.” Someone in AEW said “it looks like we dodged a bullet.” Well that’s good, though that said, he hasn’t wrestled since Feb 27. Per Votes, a new WWE documentary on Shawn Michaels has been completed and will premiere soon. It was “The Heartbreak Kid: Becoming Shawn Michaels” and it came out in April. I did not watch. Did anyone else? February 21, 2026 As far as the rumored Bad Bunny vs. Logan Paul tag team match in WWE is concerned, the Wrestling Observer Newsletter was told “there is no match on the books between them right now.” It’s expected to happen at some point, but “it is not scheduled anytime in the near future.” We’ll see if it ever happens. We discussed last week there were rumors of Bunny working with WWE after Mania but that never happened. Maybe plans just changed, but I wondered if there was a political aspect to it. WWE would surely have him, but did Bunny have issues associating with WWE, who has a lot of ties to the administration which Bunny isn’t a fan of. That’s just speculation for a possible reason on my part. Scheduling conflicts surely likely too. The Observer indicates that injured WWE stars Seth Rollins and Bron Breakker are “rehabbing their asses off” to return as soon as possible. Did they have ass injuries? On his WWE farewell vlog, AJ Styles said he originally planned to retire last year at WrestleMania 41, but plans changed after he suffered a major injury. He then decided to retire at the same event where he made his WWE debut in 2016, the Royal Rumble. That makes sense. A hall of fame career no matter how you slice it. Liv Morgan told Going Ringside that the real reason why she cried when Stephanie Vaquer yelled at her on Raw is because “a huge piece of dust flew into my eye.” Sure, Liv. F4WOnline’s Dave Meltzer mentioned that Kenny Omega is “trying to make a deal” where he can leave his Capcom commitment in Japan on March 14 so that he can make an appearance at the AEW Revolution pay-per-view the next night in Los Angeles. He likely won’t be booked for a match or advertised for an appearance at Revolution, just in case he can’t make it. Omega did return at that show but was not advertised. (1/1) Meltzer also claims that if Chris Jericho does return to WWE, it will be “on a day when people don’t expect him there.” This was part of Meltzer’s response to a question about whether or not WWE wants fans to think Jericho is inside the mystery crate that will be opened at Elimination Chamber. He re-signed with AEW so now we don’t expect him at all so any day now. Fightful Select heard that WWE has been in contact with free agent David Finlay, but he is not “factored in to creative plans” right now. Which is good because he didn’t sign there. WWE has filed for trademarks on the names Romeo Moreno, CJ Valor, and Santi Rivera. They’re sure busy at that trademark office. Do you think people there see that WWE filed something and are like “What dumb names is it today?” This week: 8/10 – 80% Overall: 6,440/10,932 – 58.9% Have a great week, everyone!