Becky Lynch Blasts WWE’s Social Media Team, Erik Believed The Viking Experience Name Was A Rib, Natalya Reveals Retirement Plans

Becky Lynch isn’t happy with WWE’s social media team.

After making her return at WrestleMania 41 Sunday and capturing the WWE Women’s Tag Team Titles alongside Lyra Valkyria by defeating Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez, Becky and Lyra lost the titles back the next night — and Becky turned on Lyra in the aftermath.

The following Monday, Becky also revealed that she was the one who attacked Bayley before WrestleMania 41 Saturday.

Despite her major involvement in multiple storylines, WWE’s social media posts recapping these events failed to tag Becky, while Bayley, Lyra, Liv, and Raquel were all mentioned.

When Erik and Ivar, known as the War Raiders in NXT, were called up to WWE RAW in 2019, their team name was abruptly changed to The Viking Experience. The rebranding was reportedly approved by Vince McMahon, though the name was met with widespread criticism. Erik later admitted he thought it was a rib at first. Just a week later, the duo was renamed The Viking Raiders.

They continued under that name until October 2024, when McMahon was no longer in charge. At that point, they reverted to their original NXT name, War Raiders.

While speaking with Chris Van Vliet on the “Insight” podcast, Erik commented on the original name. He said,

“Our first day on the main roster. We had never actually physically met Vince McMahon, but we went and stood outside his office to go and plead our case. Because I was ringside, this is fun, I was ringside, and I see our music starts playing, and it’s The War Raiders up on the screen, and then the logo changes, and Berserkerz comes up. Now I’m looking like, oh man. Then that goes away, and the Viking Experience comes up. I look and I’m like, Oh no! So I walk up and Hunter was actually ringside, he’s texting, and I walk up to him and I was like, ‘Hey, dude, is this a rib?’ He just shakes his head and goes, ‘I wish.’ I’m like, ‘What do we do?’ He’s like, ‘Well, you gotta go talk to Vince.’ All right, cool. So Ivar’s plane was late, he gets to the building, I tell him we got to go talk to Vince. This is bad, right? So we go get in line, stand, we make our case. Said, Viking Experience sounds like a Disney ride, it sounds something like a small world, the tea cups and all that stuff. The Viking Experience, bring your kids, right?”

He continued, “So, we pitched that case, and Vince was like, ‘Well, that makes sense, but we don’t have time to get that through legal.’ Because we asked to be Viking Raiders because we heard through a little birdie told us, when we changed from War Machine to War Raiders, it was they were really stuck on Raiders. So all of the names had raiders in them. This time, Vince was really stuck on us being Vikings. He loved Vikings. Little known fact, Vince was a big fan of the history show Vikings, which is probably why we got called up in the first place, because he was like, Hey, we got Vikings on TV? Bring them up. So he wanted us to be the Viking something, right? And the problem is, Vikings are a very popular thing in culture right now. So nothing could get past legal, nothing could get trademarked, nothing could get whatever. Viking Experience was shockingly free, because no one wanted to be that, including us. So we asked to be Viking Raiders. By this point, it’s like, 7:30 right? The show’s going on at eight. He was like, ‘Well, we can’t get this cleared through legal at this point. So what we’ll do is, you’ll be the Viking Experience today, and if we really don’t like it, then we’ll be Viking Raiders next week. And you know, no press is bad press. So worst case scenario, people will talk. They’ll be talking about you.’ So we’re like, okay, and as we’re leaving the office, kind of in an afterthought, he goes, ‘Oh and by the way, one of you is Ivar, and one of you is Erik, I don’t care who.’ We just walked out. I looked and we were maybe two steps outside of his office, and Ivar grabs my arm for real, and he’s like, ‘Please don’t make me be Erik. My brother’s name is Erik.’ The bully in my brain for like, three seconds, I was like, Man, I really should be mean. No, okay, fine, you could be Ivar. But I really, it was close to us being the other way. I was like, Man, I don’t know how they came up with these names. Someone in creative might have just Googled famous Viking names or something. Because I did that afterwards, trying to figure out where they come up with these names? The first one was Erik the Red. Then it was Ivar the Boneless. I was like, Oh, cool. So it’s literally just Erik, Ivar. You guys are Vikings, yep, Eric and Ivar.”

Although The Rock had been heavily involved in the storyline leading up to WWE Elimination Chamber — notably demanding Cody Rhodes’ “soul” and signaling John Cena to turn on Rhodes — he was absent from WrestleMania 41 and the surrounding events.

During a recent edition of his “Grilling JR” podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Jim Ross opined that The Rock’s absence from WrestleMania 41 (Night Two) wasn’t a “dealbreaker.”

You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:

On The Rock’s absence from WWE WrestleMania 41: “I had no thoughts that it was going to happen [Rock appearing]. I would have been happy if it did. I had no issues if it did, but there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen, Conrad. There are a lot of cooks in the kitchen on that scenario, quite frankly. It didn’t affect me, yay or nay. And I know Rock as well as anybody; I signed the guy. He was one of my star recruits back in the day. So I was kind of nonplussed by it. I didn’t expect him to be there. But then again, maybe I should have expected him to be there. It just seemed like it made a lot of sense, yay or nay, that he would be a part of WrestleMania. I think we were spoiled a little bit, quite frankly.”

On whether it could lead to a feud with The Rock and Triple H: “Maybe the latter [it being “real life political gamesmanship”]. It didn’t bother me, yay or nay. It wasn’t that I don’t want to say it’s not that big a deal. Rock’s a big deal in any format, in any scenario. But I never had any expectations that Rock was going to be a part of the whole promotion. I had nothing to lead me to that concept that he was going to be there. Anytime the Rock is involved, it’s going to add to the presentation, without question. But I don’t think it was a deal breaker.”

During a recent appearance on “The Nikki and Brie Show,” Natalya revealed when she plans to retire from wrestling. She said,

“I just feel so good. People say to me, ‘When are you going to hang it up?’ I’m going to hang it up when Randy Orton hangs it up, when Rey Mysterio hangs it up. When I look at Randy, he’s in the best shape of his life. Rey is in the best shape of his life. What I love now in WWE is we’re not letting a number define what people can do. That’s the great thing about this era. If you’re good at what you do, you go in there and rock it. I actually feel like I’m in better shape than I’ve ever been in my life. Knock on wood, I wake up every morning pain free.”