On the November 11th episode of Friday Night SmackDown Sarah Logan returned to WWE television for the first time since making a surprise appearance at the 2022 Royal Rumble. Logan made her big comeback alongside The Viking Raiders.
Vignettes and promo packages had been featuring on SmackDown for a number of weeks hyping the group’s return, while Logan hasn’t featured regularly with WWE since being released back in April 2020.
Natalia Markova Calls Out WWE Star Sarah Logan
However, it didn’t go unnoticed that Logan’s new look and gimmick bore numerous similarities to that of Max The Impaler. While fans were quick to call out Logan and WWE, fellow independent star Natalia Markova has now had her say. In conversation with WrestlingNewsCo, Markova said Logan’s new gimmick was a a “rip-off,” branding the decision to go ahead with it “disrespectful.”
“I mean, honestly, I think it is a ripoff because I know for a fact that Sarah knows Max. I think it’s again, that goes back to this disrespect thing. You can do something similar. There are different versions. You could do this gimmick. You can do this type of personality. But I think that she just saw that it was successful and she was like, alright, I’m in a bigger company and I can do whatever I want.
I think people just feel like they could do whatever they want if they’re in WWE, which honestly, again, if it would be 50 years ago when there was no internet, you can get away with that. But now, everybody knows everything. I could go on Twitter and you can see Max. Even if you don’t know who Max is, we’re still in the same business and I think you need to respect each other, and just out of respect, you could maybe use different colors or different patterns. It was just totally similar.
To me, it feels like a disrespectful ripoff. I think that shouldn’t be happening in wrestling. I love Max. I think she’s awesome. So please, please, respect her career. She’s an independent wrestler at this point. It’s hard for her to do what she does. She’s not signed to a huge amount of money and she makes money out of this. So please, wrestlers, be respectful to each other.”
Following her return on SmackDown, Sarah Logan has now been renamed Valhalla, with commentary explaining the switch by noting that the name as “given to her by the Gods.”
H/t to WrestlingNewsCo