6 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE Payback 2023 (Results & Review)

UPS…

6. Stark Gets A Bit Of Shine

WWE Payback 2023 Trish Stratus Zoey Stark
WWE.com

If this is the end of Trish Stratus’ mini-run with WWE, you’ve got to give her credit for going all-out in her steel cage match against Becky Lynch.

But it didn’t stop there with the WWE Hall-of-Famer.

After losing to The Man, Stratus got testy with her protégé Zoey Stark, who unsuccessfully tried to aide her during the match. Trish shoved her away and then slapped her, which turned out to be a big mistake. Stark slammed the cage door shut, got in Stratus’ face, and delivered a Z-360 to put Trish down. Zoey removed her “Thank you Trish” T-shirt and walked out, getting a measure of revenge on a mentor who only used her.

While this was a great little scene to give Stark a clean break from Trish, it would be fantastic if Stratus hung around for one more match to put the NXT callup over on her way out the door. If not, at least they didn’t leave Zoey standing around in that T-shirt after Status had left.

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.