Gail Kim Was Backstage At This Week's NXT (WWE News)
TNA Hall of Famer Gail Kim was at this week's NXT taping.
In some interesting news, TNA Hall of Famer and former WWE Women's Champion Gail Kim was backstage at this week's NXT.
This comes via Fightful Select, who notes that this isn't the first time that Gail has been at an NXT show lately. However, when the outlet asked whether this meant that the seven-time TNA Knockouts Champion was officially now a part of WWE, company sources said that she isn't "as of this moment".
Widely viewed as one of the greatest, most influential female wrestlers of her time and beyond, Gail Kim had most recently been serving as a producer and part of the creative team in TNA. To the shock of many, the Anthem promotion fired Gail this past March, with reports at the time stating how she was expected to have major interest from other promotions, including people in both WWE and AEW pushing for their respective companies to bring her in.
Fightful adds how they've heard that WWE has had notable interest in bringing Kim into the fold, and the market leader has kept her presence at shows "very quiet". It now remains to be seen whether Gail ends up formally re-joining WWE in some capacity.
The Importance Of Gail Kim
While her two previous WWE spells were unfortunately - through no fault of her own - so-so at best, the importance of Gail Kim to modern women's wrestling cannot be overstated.
Having arrived in TNA in 2005, it was in 2007 where things really got going for Gail, most notably with her lengthy, brutal rivalry with Awesome Kong. That rivalry truly put the TNA Knockouts division on the map, and with no exaggeration, made TNA destination viewing for many. At a time when WWE was all about 'divas', TNA put its spotlight on badass women's wrestlers wrestling badass wrestling matches. It was snug, it was intense, and in Kim and Kong, you had the perfect foils for one another as the spirited underdog babyface and the ominous powerhouse heel. On top of that, Kim would also have cracking rivalries against the likes of Mickie James, Taryn Terrell, ODB, the Beautiful People, and later Tessa Blanchard.
After initially retiring from the ring in early 2018, Gail Kim would become a producer for TNA later that year, although she would be coaxed out of retirement the following year after issues brewed over with Tessa Blanchard. Since that 2019 Tessa match, Gail has laced up her boots one further time, which was as part of an all-star ten-woman tag match in 2023 for the 1000th episode of TNA's weekly iMPACT! show.
Kim continued to serve as a producer in TNA until earlier this year, and, as touched upon, she also became a part of the promotion's creative team for her final year or so with them.