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What's the story?
Emma was released from WWE today and it came on the heels of her doing a great job against Asuka on two separate occasions. She wasn't squashed by The Empress Of Tomorrow but instead gave the former NXT Women's Champion a run for her money. Lio Rush is a newcomer to NXT and was an ROH standout before then. But his comment about Emma's release couldn't have been a good thing in winning any friends.
In case you didn't know...
Lio Rush is a very young man at 22-years-old but he's done a lot in pro wrestling. He bounced around several indie federations before finding his way to NXT. Needless to say, he's still very new to the WWE Universe but this guy has a lot of promise, but he's still very young and sometimes that shows.
The heart of the matter
When Emma was released from WWE the fact her last opponent was Asuka meant that an obvious line could be formed between The Empress Of Tomorrow's "nobody's ready for Asuka" line and Emma's release. But who would actually say that?
Your question is answered because NXT newcomer Lio Rush felt the need to make this obvious joke out in the public forum of Twitter. "I guess these are the things that happen when you're not TRULY ready for Asuka" is what Rush said. But the truth is Emma was ready and gave Asuka a pretty good fight on both occasions.
Needless to say, there were a ton of responses to this tweet. To say this is a social media faux pas makes other online mishaps look tame in comparison because this appeared to be on a nuclear level. In less than two hours he had nearly 600 replies and some top names in sports entertainment decided to weigh in as well and you can see some of the bigger ones below.
Rush obviously felt compelled to tweet out a statement on the matter where he had to do a lot of back peddling for an ill-timed joke.
What's next
Only time will tell if Lio Rush can recover from this social media explosion. But the world is a very big one and full of opportunity for someone like him. He has a lot of potential, but he might need to scrutinize his social media activity a little bit more from now on.
Author's take
Backstage heat like this can sometimes mean disastrous things to one's career in pro wrestling. If you remember when Tough Enough winner Bronson Matthews made a comment online and it caused such a considerable amount of heat, he never recovered until his release.
Only time will tell if Lio Rush can recover because he obviously had no idea what kind of can of worms he was opening when he sent out this little quip about Emma.
Tweet speak
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