*Updated* – Io Shirai has tweeted the following about the rumors of her status…
There has been a lot of reporting on Io Shirai’s status in the past couple of months. It was confirmed that she has been out of action due to injury originally by Fightful. She hasn’t been seen on NXT programming since she was in the Fatal 4-way for the NXT Women’s Title at Stand & Deliver in April over WrestleMania weekend. The gold was retained by Many Rose.
Following Fightful’s report on her injury stated her return would be in expected “in the summer”, the Wrestling Observer noted that she and Zoey Stark were expected to return “relatively soon.” That quickly turned into her possibly not renewing her contract that expires next month because she wanted to return back home to Japan. This was also reported by the Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer.
In the newest report, Meltzer is stating that Shirai has “her foot out of the door” and is not expected to renew.
There has been no confirmation from WWE about her status at the time of this writing.
If Shirai is finished with WWE, she had an impressive run in NXT.
She signed with the company in 2017 and went on to achieve a number of accolades. She won the NXT Women’s Title, NXT Women’s Tag Team Titles, and the second-annual Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic. Shirai would also be runner-up to Toni Storm in the second Mae Young Classic. She was also a stand-out in the WarGames matches and would be on the winning team in her last encounter.
Diva Dirt will provide any further news as it provides itself on Io Shirai.
