Jade Cargill In WWE Backstage Confrontation, Tension On Raw & SmackDown Rosters (WWE News)

The Wrestling Observer Newsletter is reporting that there was a serious "confrontation" backstage involving Jade Cargill and Shayna Baszler "a few months ago". This happened "before" WWE ran an injury angle that wrote Cargill off of TV in November until her return at last weekend's Elimination Chamber PLE.

Dave Meltzer's write up claims that this has "been confirmed by a half dozen people" backstage in the company, "but nobody went into details past Cargill had rubbed enough people in the Raw women’s division the wrong way, and Baszler was wanting to fight her until management found out and calmed the situation down".

In other words, WWE managed to avoid having a nasty behind the scenes incident on their hands prior to writing Jade off episodes of TV before Survivor Series: WarGames; Cargill was subsequently replaced as one half of the reigning Women's Tag-Team Champions (alongside Bianca Belair) by Naomi. That's who she attacked upon her return at Chamber, and the 'whodunit' story has yet to be fleshed out fully heading into WrestleMania 41.

It's believed that this backstage confrontation happened in the summer months of 2024. That's when Jade and Bianca worked several matches against Baszler and her tag partner Zoey Stark on TV and PLE, at least, so it'd make sense. The Observer doesn't have definitive details beyond that, but Meltzer did state "it wasn’t just one thing" that sparked the aggro.

He's also reported that some of the beef "stemmed from inside the ring in those matches and some didn’t".

Tensions Believed To Be Worse On SmackDown Than Raw

The Observer's write up went on to say that an unnamed female star within the company "said they believed the tension within the Smackdown side was worse than the Raw side". That either suggests that the blue brand's women's division at large is up in arms, or refers to the fact that Cargill, Belair and others she's been aligned with are more upset about the situation than Baszler, Stark or those still on the Monday flagship.

All of this is very intriguing, but there's no evidence Cargill was written off television because of rising tensions or this potentially violent situation with Shayna. It is possible that there's still lingering strain between both the Raw and SmackDown sides owing to what happened previously though.

Again, Jade returned on the Elimination Chamber show in Toronto. She attacked Naomi before the bell sounded as Belair lost her mind locked inside one of the Chamber pods. Naomi was then taken out of the match and Cargill returned backstage. The kayfabe 'whodunit' story is just heating up again, but it seems there's even more drama in the locker room to contend with first.

Stay tuned to the WWE news for more on this story when it breaks.