At WWE’s 2021 Summerslam, Becky Lynch made a surprise return to in-ring action, defeating Bianca Belair to capture the Smackdown Women’s Championship. It was Lynch’s first WWE match in a little over a year.
Belair was about to face Carmella–herself a replacement for advertised challenger Sasha Banks–when Lynch’s entrance music played over the speakers. Lynch hit the ring and beat up Carmella. She then challenged Belair to a title match on the spot, which Belair accepted.
Lynch offered her hand to Belair. But when Belair let down her defenses to accept it, Lynch landed a cheap shot, followed by a Man Slam, to score the pinfall. Lynch then celebrated in the ring as Belair watched from the outside.
Becky Lynch went on hiatus from WWE on May 11, 2021, when she announced, following the 2020 Money in the Bank pay-per-view, that she was pregnant and would be relinquishing the Raw Women’s Championship to MITB winner Asuka. She and fellow WWE Superstar Seth Rollins announced the arrival of their baby daughter, Roux, in December 2020.
Lynch is a 5-time WWE women’s champion, winning the Raw title once and the Smackdown title four times, including her current reign. Her 2018 run as “The Man,” which cast her as a brash, take-no-prisoners badass in the mold of “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, made her one of the most popular, transformative WWE Superstars on the roster. She won the main event at Wrestlemania 35–the first women’s main event in WWE history–by defeating Ronda Rousey and Charlotte Flair, becoming the first (and thus far only) unified WWE women’s champion.
That’s not the only big moment from this year’s Summerslam. Earlier in the evening, 2K Games revealed the first trailer for WWE 2K22; however, that game won’t be arriving until March 2022.
