WWE Star Shoots On Recent Name Change
This current worker thinks WWE's name switch makes her "easier to understand".
IYO SKY thinks her name change from Io Shirai makes things "easier to understand" for wrestling fans.
The former NXT standout joined Bayley and Dakota Kai in a brand new faction at SummerSlam in late-July, and pretty much nobody saw it coming - Shirai had been linked with a WWE exit, so it came as a huge surprise when she showed up as part of a major storyline opposite players like Bianca Belair and Becky Lynch on one of 2022's biggest pay-per-views.
WWE's announcers were very clear about the name switch too, which helped, and SKY is a big fan of the change. She told Tokyo Sports that the capitalisation of her original forename 'Io' was misconstrued as lowercase 'LO' by some. Basically, she worried that a fair few casuals thought she was actually called 'LO SHIRAI'.
Simplifying things and making fans think of her high-flying abilities with the 'SKY' part was important. She's glad that Triple H decided to mix things up and debut a new name as soon as she appeared on WWE's main roster too.
"I think it's a good name because the 'SKY' in it conveys [a certain] image", she said.