When Samantha Irvin announced Naomi as the second entrant in the 2024 Royal Rumble, it marked a brand new era for both “The Glow” and the WWE Universe, period, as one of the more interesting performers of the last decade was back and better than ever for her second run in the promotion.

Fresh off a run in TNA where she held the Knockouts Championship for 182 days and won 14 of her 16 singles matches under her Trinity moniker, Naomi has now proven to WWE that she can handle being a legitimate main eventer, put on great matches, and, ultimately, get over with the fans, with the potential to now do the same on the main roster much like Drew McIntyre and Cody Rhodes before her.

Discussing what it was like to come back to the WWE Universe after nearly two years away in an appearance on The Bump, Naomi laid out her number one goal for this second run in The Fed: Grand Slam Championship gold.

“I think it's just everything that's happened in almost these past two years, and for me to still know that I matter, know my value, know my worth, and just what I've done in TNA,” Naomi said on The Bump via Fightful. “There's no doubt anymore. There's nothing else for me to question about my talent, about my capabilities, about the star power I have. I've proven it. So now, I gotta just do it this go-around in the WWE in a way bigger way than I've ever done before. But the challenge this time is that, though I've been around, I'm back again, but now it's like starting all the way over and back at the bottom, but I'm looking forward to that challenge and working my way back up to go against the best of the best. My goal is to be a Grand Slam Champion, and that's what my focus is. In order to get there, that's that's gonna take a lot of work, but that's the mission that I'm on.”

Now, for fans out of the know, to become a Women's Grand Slam Champion, a performer has to win the WWE Women's Championship, the WWE Women's World Heavyweight Championship, the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship, and the NXT Women's Championship under whatever name each belt was using at the time. For Naomi to achieve that goal, she'd need to unseat Rhea Ripley, or whoever is holding the belt in the moment, on RAW, and then head down to NXT to hold that belt too, which is actually a pretty interesting idea, all things considered.

Jordynne Grace reveals how she kept her Rumble spot from Naomi.

While Naomi was the biggest return at the Royal Rumble, she wasn't the biggest surprise of the show, with that honor going to the woman who defeated her for the TNA Knockouts Championship, Jordynne Grace.

Discussing how her return came about in an interview with Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful, Grace revealed she was able to largely keep her return a secret, even from close friends from Impact/TNA like Naomi and Chelsea Green.

“They put me at a different hotel than all the main wrestlers. I guess that's the ‘surprise hotel.' On Thursday, I flew out to the PC in Orlando and from there I drove to Tampa that night. They asked me if I wanted to go home on Friday, and I was like, ‘No, I just need a day to mentally prepare myself for this.' I ended up, that day, going to the gym and trying to be as normal as possible. Spray tan and all that normal stuff. Saturday was the day,” Jordynne Grace told Sean Ross Sapp via WrestleZone.

“I didn't tell anybody, besides my husband [Jonathan Gresham]. I didn't tell any wrestlers because I was so scared of anything getting out, which of course it did anyway, but it could have gotten out [sooner]. Ruining surprises, you can't have surprises in wrestling anymore. People were shocked. I saw so many people that I've known for years. They all initially thought this was my official debut. ‘No, I'm TNA Knockouts Champion, and I'm here representing TNA.' That was even more shocking to them.

“I saw Chelsea Green, who was really mad that I didn't tell her. She came up, and she hit me. ‘Someone just texted me and said that you're here, and I didn't believe them, but here you are.' She was really upset that I didn't tell her. ‘It's better that I'm here as a surprise.' I also didn't tell Trinity, which was the funniest thing. All week, I'm texting her, ‘I'm really excited to see you in the Rumble.' What she didn't know is I was going to be standing across the ring seeing her.

“It's crazy. I don't know how many actual WWE fans watch TNA. I don't know what the exact crossover is. But it felt so good to get that reaction when we had the standoff and the hug. That was awesome. I'm so glad everybody kind of knew what was going on between us.”

Unfortunately for Grace, her debut was ultimately spoiled a few hours before the match, with the elevations of Roxxane Perez and Tiffany Stratton from NXT and the debut of Jade Cargill drawing much bigger reactions from fans online and in the stadium. Still, it's very interesting to learn the lengths WWE went to to keep Grace a secret and how much they put her over in the match, too.