Top Japanese women’s wrestler Io Shirai, who was scheduled to report to the WWE Performance Center shortly after taking time off due to a neck injury following her farewell from the STARDOM promotion in Japan, may actually not be heading to the WWE after all, according to a report from The Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
The report notes that there was an issue with a neck injury when the WWE did their testing several months back, which led to her announcing that she was taking time off and that while wrestlers are not allowed to say that they are publicly going to the WWE until the company announces it first, that her return to STARDOM on July 30th where she attacked Oedo Tai and asked Viper to join her as a tag team in the Queen’s Quest group caused a lot of surprise for fans of the promotion.
The report notes that Shirai announced her return on August 13th at the Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan and that she would also be in the upcoming Five Star Grand Prix tournament, while also issuing a challenge to Team Jungle for the Artist Of Stardom Championship because of the fact that she is not coming to the WWE after all. The report states that Shirai contacted Rossy Ogawa and STARDOM on July 28th, noting that she was ready to return to the promotion on a full-time basis and that while nobody has publicly stated that WWE changed their minds about bringing her in, the phraseology being used is that she got some bad news and told Ogawa that she was ready to come back, despite nobody directly stating that WWE decided against offering her a contract.