SummerSlam was an incredible, full-circle moment for the members of Damage CTRL
After Bayley officially formed the faction at SummerSlam 2022, marching to the ring with Dakota Kai and IYO SKY by her side to challenge Becky Lynch and Bianca Belair, the group found themselves off the card but still made an impact on the show, with the “Genius of the Sky” cashing in her Money in the Bank briefcase after the penultimate match of the show before celebrating with her faction as the new WWE Woman's World Champion a few seconds later.
And by with her faction, I mean all of it, as, despite suffering an ACL injury earlier in the year, ‘King Kota” made a surprise return after the match to celebrate alongside her pals.
Discussing how her special SummerSlam moment came together on her Twitch channel, Kai detailed the harrowing journey she had to undertake to get to Detroit on the first Saturday in August.
“I literally found out they wanted me to be there at 1 PM on that day. I was still chilling. I was like, ‘It's Saturday, my sleep-in day. Not even going to set my alarm.' My phone was on Do Not Disturb, I always have my phone on Do Not Disturb when I sleep in. I wake up, my phone is blowing up. My anxiety was through the roof. I saw all these missed calls, all these texts. Bayley is texting me, trying to call me. ‘Do you guys know what day it is, what time it is, where I am, and where SummerSlam is?' The math ain't mathing. If I could teleport, that would be perfect. 1 PM, I s**t you not. The rest of the day, my anxiety was at a ten. There was no time to be not anxious,” Dakota Kai said via Fightful.
“Are there even flights? Sure, enough, there was a flight they wanted me to get on. It was around 5:15 PM, and I could not make it. I could not. There was literally only one flight left. This shows how desperate I was to get there because it was Spirit. I've never flown Spirit before. ‘Please don't let anything happen.' This flight was set for 6 PM.”
Goodness gracious, flying Spirit the day of with a 6 PM departure time? Assuming Kai was flying out of Orlando International Airport, her home base, according to Twitter, that's a 160-minute non-stop flight. How was she able to get to the show? Well, when there's a will, there's a way, as Kai went on to detail.
Against all odds, Dakota Kai was able to make her re-debut at SummerSlam.
Further discussing her incredibly rushed journey to SummerSlam, Kai revealed how her troubles only began when she got on her flight.
“Boarding time passes. It's 6 PM, we're still standing around. We board at 6:30. It's getting closer to 7. ‘SummerSlam starts in an hour, in what world am I going to make this?' They were saying the plane had maintenance issues, which is why we were delayed. They're waiting for papers. How, in today's technology, do you have to wait for a paper? We have technology. Just text them, ‘we're good.' It's 2023. Email them the papers, send a screenshot, text them, DM them. We wait for a stack of papers. We haven't even pulled away from the gate,” Kai added.
“It's after 7 PM. Everything that went wrong, could. We take off at 7:15. It's a two-and-a-half-hour flight to Detroit. I forgot what city we were going to because I was that frantic. When I'm landing, it's the middle of the show, I want to say it was after Shayna [Shayna Baszler] and Ronda [Ronda Rousey]. Gunther and Drew [Drew McIntyre]. Thank goodness they sent car service to come and get me. They also had a makeup lady in the car. It's about a 20-minute drive from the airport to the venue. Luckily their match was semi-main. I wouldn't have made it. We get to the venue, I got dressed in the locker room, and it was straight to be loaded for where I was meant to be. I didn't even get to say hi to everyone, really.”
On paper, you'd think WWE would have had Kai's travel figured out well before the day of the show, as SKY and Bayley had been hinting at a Money in the Bank briefcase cash-in at SummerSlam for weeks at that point. Still, it was pretty incredible to see Damage CTRL's plan come together, as their moment together at the end of the cash-in will go down as one of the true highlights of SummerSlam to many fans.
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