Chris Jericho Spotted With Current WWE Announcer Amid Return Rumors (PHOTO), Top WWE Female Star Wants To Turn Heel, Lyra Valkyria Reacts To AJ Lee’s WWE Return

— Nikki Bella has set her sights on new goals following her return to WWE, hinting that a character refresh could be part of her plan. She made her full-time comeback in June and went head-to-head with Becky Lynch leading up to last month’s Clash in Paris pay-per-view event. On a recent edition of “The Nikki & Brie Show,” Bella addressed a fan question about her current objectives now that she’s fully settled back into the ring.

You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:

On her goals now that she’s returned to ring: “At first, I didn’t know what to expect when it started, and then I knew what my first direction was, and then that all changed with Liv. As far as me personally, one thing I knew that I wanted out of this comeback, and I still do, is to get back into strong shape and wrestling shape and get to a place where I used to be many years ago. Physically, that part. Then it was to get myself into the wrestling place of this new era. How far can I push myself beyond my comfort zone and how can I hang in this era? Who I am as a wrestler and in the ring, am I going to change that? I’ve always been more known as a powerhouse and that was a change when I came back from my broken neck. In that way, I had to change some of my moveset and change what I was doing in my craft. Now I know that I’m going to do that again and I want to change.”

On wanting to change up her character: “In the beginning, I wanted to keep Fearless Nikki as Fearless Nikki because, to me, my comeback was more about nostalgia and ‘here is this Hall of Famer and legend, let’s keep her as is.’ That was my mindset. I’m a marketing machine, so I wanted to keep what was marketable and what people recognized me as. Now, being in it, I’m actually wanting to kind of change her a little bit. I think it would be a lot of fun. I do work with creative, every week, hands-on. I love being hands-on. Everyone there is hands-on. It’s actually very different than before. Even when we do promos, we used to get handed something, and it’s way different now. It’s really cool. You just sit and talk about it. They give you the basis of the idea, but everything is different the day of. It was never like this before and it’s really cool. I’m really excited to maybe push Fearless Nikki in a different direction. Deep down, I would love to go back heel, but it’s so much fun to have the challenge of being a babyface in this era that is a very different era. That’s been something. I’m excited to see what’s to come with it.”

— Lyra Valkyria recently shared her admiration for AJ Lee, highlighting it in a new interview while reflecting on Lee’s WWE return. Lee made her comeback on Friday’s episode of SmackDown, and during an interview with FM102/1, Valkyria recalled a moment when she had tweeted a photo of Lee meeting a young Roxanne Perez, showing how Lee has inspired fans across generations. She said,

“Okay, so we have to talk about what just happened this AJ Lee’s big return. Obviously, massive fan. Fans have actually gone back through my old tweets. You can see that I was a fan from like 2014. Oh, she’s got them right here.”

She continued, “So here we are now looking at a tweet from me from 2014, where I just coincidentally tweeted a picture of AJ Lee meeting a very young Roxanne Perez. First of all, Why did I tweet AJ with a fan? That’s a bit like who tweets other people’s fan pictures. Don’t know. But I’m so glad that I did. 2025. AJ Lee resigns. Roxanne Perez is someone I have a lot of history with. You know, we feuded over the NXT Women’s Championship. She’s just come up to Raw recently as well. We’re all on the same roster. AJ just returned. What a year. What a time to be in WWE.”

— Chris Jericho’s possible WWE comeback has been a hot topic in recent weeks. After “liking” a post about returning under Triple H’s leadership, the speculation picked up even more when ‘Y2J’ was spotted with WWE ring announcer Mike Rome.

Rome shared a photo carousel from Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights on Instagram, and the second set of images featured him alongside Jericho. In his caption, Rome mentioned reconnecting with “old friends,” a comment that quickly fueled rumors about Jericho’s future with WWE. Rome wrote,

“Had a blast at @horrornights at @unistudios seeing the #wyatt6 house and seeing some old friends.”