Summary

Becky Lynch said she pushed back when WWE considered changing the payoff to her WrestleMania 38 program with Bianca Belair.

Speaking about the feud, Lynch said the story only worked if Belair got the final win back after losing the Raw Women's Championship in quick fashion at SummerSlam 2021. Lynch added that there was a point where WWE discussed turning the WrestleMania match into a triple threat, a move she believed would have kept the title on her instead of giving Belair the planned moment.

That WrestleMania 38 match remains one of the more important recent examples of WWE completing a long-term women's title story, and Lynch recently argued in a separate interview that WWE still needs to rebuild women as WrestleMania main eventers.

Quote from Becky Lynch

"We paid off the story in the most amazing way. And what was so incredible about Bianca, I could write a book about how amazing she is, but when I took that title from her, I know how upset she was because she thought, 'Oh, they don't believe in me anymore. They think I'm doing a bad job, and I get squashed in this way.'"

"But she was so gracious. She was like, 'I'm so happy.' She could have been like, 'This bitch is coming in, taking my spot. She's been gone, I've been here putting in the hard work, and now I just have to roll over for her.'"

"And I always wanted to pay it back to her in the biggest way possible. The fact that we were able to get there, we had to fight for it, because at one point they wanted to put somebody else into the match, make it a triple threat. But I was like, 'That's not the story.' That was going to be the hill I died on, I was ready to really fight."

"Thankfully, they changed it, because it needed to go back to Bianca. If it had gone to a triple threat, they would have kept it on me. But the story needed Bianca to win and take that victory."

"And it just felt like such a happy, perfect ending."

Becky Lynch and Bianca Belair's WrestleMania 38 payoff

Lynch's comments matter because they frame Belair's WrestleMania 38 victory as something WWE nearly complicated, even though the cleanest ending was already sitting there. If the match had been expanded into a triple threat and the title had stayed with Lynch, the entire arc from SummerSlam to WrestleMania would have landed very differently.

They also underline how much Belair's win depended on WWE following through once it reached the biggest stage. Lynch described Belair as gracious during the process, but her version of events makes clear that the final payoff only worked because Belair was allowed to get the decisive moment back.

Sources

Becky Lynch while speaking on Vulture's Good One podcast