Former WWE Women’s Champion To Return For WWE’s ‘Mixed Match Challenge’ Tournament
Fans will get to see the return of a former WWE Women’s Champion ahead of the Royal Rumble in the coming weeks. With the WWE’s Mixed Match Challenge tournament scheduled to take place within the next several weeks, there have been rumors about who the various male-female pairings would be. Among the superstars participating in the ring will be current WWE SmackDown Women’s Champion Charlotte Flair and WWE Raw Women’s Champion Alexa Bliss. However, a former multiple-time women’s champ will be returning for a different role in the tournament.
On Tuesday afternoon, the WWE.com website posted a breaking news report regarding the Mixed Match Challenge. Tournament hosts Renee Young and Byron Saxton appeared in a Facebook Live video to announce who will be taking on commentary duties for the Challenge. Current commentators Michael Cole and Corey Graves, both of whom appear as part of the Raw commentary team, will also handle commentary for the Mixed Match Challenge. However, the big news was that former WWE Women’s Champion Beth Phoenix, also known as “The Glamazon,” will return to take on a role on the commentary team. Phoenix was last seen at WWE’s Hall of Fame ceremony ahead of WrestleMania 33 last year.
Phoenix, who was with WWE for nearly a decade, captured the WWE Women’s Championship three times during her career. She also held the WWE Divas Championship once during her run in 2011 to 2012. In 2017, she was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame based on her well-known credentials for her outstanding career in professional wrestling. While Phoenix was around at the time of the “Divas,” she was far from it and really helped keep the true spirit of women’s wrestling moving forward. She’ll now lend her expertise from her days in the ring to commentary about the men’s and women’s tag teams participating in the new WWE format.
Of course, with Beth’s arrival to the WWE for this commentary role, it will come a bit under two weeks before the WWE’s Royal Rumble 2018 pay-per-view. It was recently announced that 30 women will participate in the first-ever women’s Rumble match. With a total of 20 women currently split between Raw and SmackDown Live, it has left the door open for former women’s superstars to show up as surprise entrants. Could Beth “The Glamazon” Phoenix be among those entrants?
At the very least, WWE fans will be able to see and hear Beth Phoenix along with the Mixed Match Challenge starting on January 16 at 10 p.m. Eastern Time as part of the Facebook Watch show.
