WWE Rumors on McIntyre vs. Priest, Asuka's Injury; Backstage Info on The Rock Promos

Bleacher Report catches you up on the latest news from the WWE Universe.

McIntyre vs. Priest Reportedly Planned for Clash at the Castle

Damian Priest agreed on this week's episode of Monday Night Raw to give Drew McIntyre a future shot at the World Heavyweight Championship, and plans are reportedly in place for when that match will happen.

According to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter (h/t Subhojeet Mukherjee of Ringside News), the current expectation is that the McIntyre vs. Priest will happen at the Clash at the Castle premium live event.

Clash at the Castle is scheduled for June 15, and it will take place at the OVO Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland.

The decision to hold the match off until Clash at the Castle makes a ton of sense since McIntyre is from Scotland and deserves to be involved in a huge match on that show.

The first Clash of the Castle was held in Wales in 2022, and McIntyre was part of the main event, challenging Roman Reigns for the undisputed WWE Universal Championship.

While the fans were firmly behind McIntyre, Reigns retained thanks to interference from the debuting Solo Sikoa.

In the two years since then, McIntyre has often talked about getting screwed out of winning a world title on his home continent of Europe, and it contributed to his heel turn.

McIntyre was screwed over again at WrestleMania 40, as he beat Seth Rollins for the world title only to have Damian Priest successfully cash in his Money in the Bank contract on him after an attack at the hands of CM Punk.

WWE seems to be building toward a huge McIntyre vs. Punk match when Punk returns from injury, so it may be a safe assumption that The Scottish Warrior will beat Priest for the title at Clash at the Castle.

Asuka Reportedly Dealing with Knee Injury

Asuka has been out of action for the past couple of weeks, and more details have recently come to light regarding her injury.

According to Meltzer (h/t Mukherjee), Asuka injured her knee on SmackDown two months ago. While she wrestled through it after taking a short amount of time off, the ailment got worse during the European tour.

Asuka and Kairi Sane, known collectively as The Kabuki Warriors, dropped the WWE Women's Tag Team Championships to Bianca Belair and Jade Cargill at Backlash in France earlier this month.

In the aftermath of Backlash, Asuka had been advertised to compete in the Queen of the Ring tournament, however, she was not cleared to compete and was removed from her scheduled first-round match against Lyra Valkyria.

Asuka was replaced by Damage CTRL stablemate Dakota Kai, who went on to lose to Valkyria.

The Empress of Tomorrow has not been on WWE programming since Backlash, not even in a non-wrestling role in support of Kai, Sane and Iyo Sky.

The timetable for Asuka's return remains unclear, but given her status as one of the best and most accomplished female Superstars in WWE history, she is already sorely missed.

Details Behind The Rock's Social Media Promos

Brian Gewirtz, who has long been The Rock's personal writer and business associate, provided some insight this week into The Final Boss' recent WWE run.

During an appearance on the The Ringer Wrestling Show (h/t Mukherjee), Gewirtz mentioned The Rock's first SmackDown promo after aligning himself with Roman Reigns and how about half of the planned content wasn't able to be conveyed due to time constraints.

Gewirtz noted that it resulted in The Rock adjusting and posting promos on social media in order to say everything he didn't have time to say on WWE programming:

"So, I communicated with Rock afterward, like, 'What are we gonna do? You didn't get to cut half the promo,' and he's like, 'Nah, it's cool. I'll just cut it on social media. It'll be fine,' and that's kind of how that started and when he did, it's like, yeah, I'm doing this, I'm doing it full scale and I'm gonna say whatever I want. He's reached a point in his life now, which, we all hope to get there at some point which is I'm gonna do what I wanna do and I'm not gonna do what I don't wanna do and this is how I'm gonna do it. …

"There was certainly like a, 'Oh, what's happening? What are we doing?' That we needed to communicate to WWE. But it certainly wasn't like, hey, getting a call from Triple H who's saying tell Rock to cut out that Instagram stuff because all it does is give massive amounts of views and attention to the angle and the product and everything. It's communication stuff sometimes."

For several weeks leading up to WrestleMania 40, The Rock posted lengthy promo videos on Instagram and X in which he took shots at Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins, oftentimes in a vulgar manner that wouldn't be possible on television.

The promos were widely lauded by fans, and they became appointment viewing before episodes of SmackDown.

While cutting a promo on social media rather than SmackDown would result in less people seeing it for most, that isn't the case for The Rock, who has 17.1 million followers on X and a staggering 397 million followers on Instagram.

The end result was The Rock getting massively over as a heel, and he played a huge role in the angle that saw Rhodes finally finish his story by beating Reigns for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania.

The Rock has already teased returning for a match against Rhodes, and given the success of his social media promos, those may return as well.

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