It has been a fantastic year for Madison Rayne. The former Knockouts Champion had another run in Impact Wrestling earlier this year, and she also competed on the historic All In show on September 1st, and she even made her WWE debut recently when she took part in the Mae Young Classic tournament. This makes it even more shocking to learn that Rayne apparently considered retiring from the ring not too long ago. Believe it or not, Rayne told the The Mirror UK during a conference call that she was indeed considering leaving the business. Madison Rayne’s career resurgence continues to grow today as she announced a few days ago that she had officially signed a deal with Ring of Honor to compete in their women’s division.
“It was roughly a year ago that I sat down on my couch in my living room with my husband and had a really tough conversation, where we tried to discuss if maybe my career was coming to a close and what that was going to look like, or if I was going to take any frustrations I had and any bit of second-guessing myself that I was doing and I was going to flip that on its head, make it a positive, totally change who I was and make a drastic turn in my career path.” Rayne said.
When Shelton Benjamin returned to WWE television last year, fans who remembered his work from his previous run in the company were looking forward to seeing the former Intercontinental Champion mix it up with some of the best wrestlers on the WWE roster today. Aside from returning and being briefly paired up with Chad Gable last year, Benjamin has not made a great deal of appearances on WWE programming at all. Shelton has now resorted to taking to Twitter to call out SmackDown General Manager Paige and ask for an opportunity to appear on the show. Paige has not responded to Benjamin’s tweet as of right now, but hopefully, it won’t take too much longer for Shelton Benjamin to return to WWE television.
I Am a warrior I am a competitor & I am DAMN GOOD! Yet I have not had a match on #SmackDownLIVE in months. I’m here to compete I thrive on competition @RealPaigeWWE Its time you Got me off the bench & LET ME FIGHT!
— Shelton J. Benjamin (@Sheltyb803) September 29, 2018
WWE’s cruiserweight division currently has some of the hardest working performers in the entire company, but most fans have always felt that the growth of the division has been hampered by the fact that 205 Live traditionally aired after SmackDown each Tuesday night when most of the fans in attendance had already decided to leave the arenas for the evening. After the return of the Mixed Match Challenge, WWE made the decision to push 205 Live back to Wednesday nights. According to Cageside Seats, 205 Live has actually been doing well ever since the show was moved back. There is still no word on whether or not the company is considering making the move to Wednesdays a permanent one.
