Heading into SummerSlam, everything was on the line for Ricochet.
If he won the match, or at least turned in a fantastic in-ring effort, it could supercharge his WWE career, which has largely been stuck in the middle of the mid-card with only the occasional flirtations with the main event picture offered his way.
And if he lost in an ugly fashion? Well, good luck getting someone else to believe in you again, as most WWE Superstars don't get that sort of second chance unless they're 6-foot-5, 280.
Fortunately, after turning in an impressive effort that firmly falls into the former category at SummerSlam, the future is looking bright for the “One and Only,” and he has just the goal in mind from which to cash in his effort: a win at the Royal Rumble. Discussing his career moving forward in an interview with Sporting News ahead of the “Biggest Summer of the Year,” Ricochet explained why he wants to become Mr. Royal Rumble and all of the opportunities that come along with that title.
“All of it. The opportunity, the prestige, what it gets you, but also, I feel like one thing that the Royal Rumble shows is the will, the determination, the guts, what you're willing to go through to accomplish something,” Ricochet said via Fightful. “The Rey Mysterios, Shawn Michaels, doing it all, I don't have to be first and do the whole thing, you know what I mean? If I come out first, I still plan on winning. I feel like with what Ricochet is capable of doing. I feel like that's no problem. I feel like the Royal Rumble, especially if you come out early, shows that tenacity and just everything about what it takes to win, and it's always been my favorite event. Having everybody out there fighting over something, I love it. Obviously, like you said, everyone wants to be World Champion. I'm sure everyone wants to win the Royal Rumble, for sure, but even more, I want to win the Royal Rumble.”
On paper, Ricochet is the sort of performer who is built to win the Royal Rumble, as he can grapple, he can fly, and he has a varied enough experience level from which to draw from against performers big, small, and anywhere in between. Whether WWE gives him that opportunity, however, remains to be seen, as Ricochet feels more like a Money in the Bank challenger than the sort of performer who lands a guaranteed main event spot at the “Showcase of the Immortals.”
Ricochet's fiance explains her Money in the Bank faux pas.
While Ricochet's fiance Samantha Irvin was thrust into his feud with Logan Paul due to a very low blow in a promo before SummerSlam, the RAW ring announcer has issues of her own, including at Money in the Bank, where she accidentally mixed up Damage CTRL and The Judgment Day when announcing the Women's Ladder match.
Stopping by Out of Character with Ryan Satin to discuss this and more, Irvin noted how Bayley and IYO SKY reacted to her mistake and what she learned from the situation.
“That whole week leading up to it, we did the UK tour. We had Raw, then we had the UK tour, then Money In The Bank, then again Raw right after that. I said representing Judgment Day, I counted, I said representing the Judgment Day twenty times that week. I said representing Damage CTRL zero times that week. I don’t know what happened, and I’m being honest. This really is on me, I was just so relieved that I got through the rules that when we kept rolling, I looked over and I’m like, ‘Representing the Judgment Day, Bayley’, cause Bayley’s coming out. I’m like ‘Okay, great.’ I go and sit down and then IYO SKY’s music hits and I go, ‘I didn’t say Damage CTRL at all. I don’t remember saying those words at all.’ I said to Rome, ‘What did I say? I didn’t say [Damage CTRL]’, and he was like, ‘What, I didn’t notice anything.’ He [checked] Twitter and he’s like, ‘Yeah, you said Judgment Day.’ I’m like, ‘Damn. Oh no,'” Samantha Irvin told Ryan Satin via Fightful.
“First of all, I was like it is what it is. You gotta keep rolling, it’s fine. I knew that what the women were about to come out and do was far more important than that. So I [told myself] I was going to hit up Bayley after and apologize because I messed up her intro. She was cool, she was just making fun of me about it. Once I knew she was fine, I was okay. For the fans, for the reaction that I got, it made me really realize that you did it. You made it to a place where misspeaking is newsworthy, so I’m actually kind of proud. If I was a smarter businesswoman, I would have done it on purpose because the response has been overwhelming. I do apologize to everybody that I took out of the moment because that’s what I would feel bad about, I never want to take anyone out of the magic of the moment. So if I did that for someone, I apologize because it was not intentional.”
Would it have been cool to see Irvin make the call intentionally to make a viral moment? That certainly would have been a bold choice, but in the end, everyone makes mistakes, and Irvin was able to right hers in a way that got her a little extra publicity too. All in all, everyone came out better in the end.
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