During Monday's RAW, we learned that Women's World Champion Naomi was not medically cleared to compete and was unable to defend the title against Iyo Sky as planned.
Later in the show, a backstage segment aired with Stephanie Vaquer saying to Iyo, "You’re not the only one who was promised a title match." The implication seemed to be that her title match at Clash in Paris on August 31 had been pulled from the show, despite her winning the Evolution 2 Battle Royal.
Talking on Wrestling Observer Live, Bryan Alvarez suggested that Naomi's injury could keep her sidelined for the foreseeable future.
"There is definitely a rumor going around in WWE about what’s going on with Naomi, and like it’s being talked about by people there, and if it is, in fact, what’s going on, she is going to be out for a long, long time," Alvarez said. "Okay, I’ll just say that for now. My presumption is that, you know, people will find out probably fairly soon, but I think that that it would be a while. If this is the case."
"Clash in Paris isn’t for three more weeks," he continued. "So oftentimes when, let’s say that she has a concussion, okay, if she had a concussion, they would just be [say] she’s not medically cleared to compete [and] they would evaluate her next week. To already presume she’s not going to be at Clash in Paris. That doesn’t sound good."
WWE has not provided any additional details, and this comes shortly after Naomi retained the Women's World Championship at SummerSlam in a Triple Threat match that saw her overcome Sky and Rhea Ripley.
Whether WWE will strip the former Money in the Bank holder of the title or give her time to recover from whatever this unknown injury is remains to be seen.
"I’d been thinking about this for a while, about where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do if I was going to change," Naomi recently said of her new "Proceed With Caution" gimmick. "I wanted to do something completely opposite and outside of the box, from the bright, the glow, the neon colors and the bright, bubbly stuff."
"With what I did to Jade, and leaving a crime scene, it popped into my head – oh man, this is perfect. Caution tape is universal. Everybody knows what that means when they see it."
She added, "It’s everything that I wanted it to be. It feels good to be able to change the audience perspective of me in such a quick period of time. That’s something I was definitely nervous about, because they’ve seen me as a good character and a ‘good girl’ for so long. To just completely switch it up – you never know how or if it’s going to work, or whether or not fans are going to buy it. That was a big challenge for me."
Stay tuned for updates on Naomi's status as we have them.