Sexyy Red Arrested Over The Weekend Before Hosting NXT Battleground

On a pretty interesting note, the WWE NXT brand put on the NXT Battleground PLE live from Las Vegas this past weekend. It was a great show, but the host of the show was considered by many to be remarkably odd. Most people had not heard of her, especially those who are not privy to the newest hip-hop/rap names. Sexyy Red has slowly been gaining some popularity in the industry. That said, WWE has worked with a variety of music artists over the years. Some have even taken bumps, which is always cool to see.

However, Sexyy Red’s music is not exactly connected well with the WWE brand. WWE is technically no longer trying to be a PG company, where every show is built around what families can watch. This is why some of the programming has been going toward more of a TV-14 environment lately. Sadly, most of the music Sexyy Red performs still surpasses what WWE is able to use on their programming. This is likely one of the big reasons she just made appearances on NXT and did not perform.

Regardless of why WWE decided to utilize her, she appeared on NXT programming and was then chosen to host NXT Battleground. This event took place live from Las Vegas at the UFC Apex Arena on Sunday. Red was going to host the show, so she needed to get to Vegas by the end of the day on Saturday at the latest. This is why she was preparing to take a flight, but ran into some legal trouble along the way.

SEXYY RED ARRESTED

Sexyy Red was at the Newark Liberty International Airport early Saturday morning. However, according to TMZ, cops were called in to break up a fight between Red and her crew and another group. TMZ was able to get the airport video of the fight. In the video, a few men essentially jump into the frame as they are falling to the ground where both are throwing punches. Sexyy Red then pops into the video wearing a red bonnet.

She appears ready to throw down but does not jump into the pile of men. Rather, she is using a stand on the ground and waving it around, ready to use on anyone. While Red does not appear to make contact with anyone in the video, she is most certainly in the mix of things. She was likely lucky that someone jumped in to pull her away from the fight so that she avoided getting hurt.

This whole event caused Airport Security to run in and grab everyone. There is still some fighting going on as they come in. Sexyy Red can still be seen going in and out of a door at the terminal. Which makes some assume she may have gone back to potentially fight off-camera. Police Officers finally showed up, and they arrested everyone, with Red included.

The Airport Authority told TMZ that Sexyy Red was arrested for disorderly conduct. That is pretty much a misdemeanor. Others in the fight were hit with assault charges, however. Some “alleged victims” were transported to the hospital with minor injuries.

Red did address this seemingly, as she jumped onto social media claiming “just got out.” She later offered to replace the phone of people she got into an altercation with at the airport.

WWE’s HANDLING OF EVERYTHING

One would have assumed that Sexyy Red or her team likely got in touch with WWE about the arrest. However, it is very likely that only select people knew about it, such as Shawn Michaels and Triple H. Fightful reported that many were surprised to hear about her arrest. Considering she did show up for the show, despite the ordeal, that makes sense.

However, her arrest very well could have been why Red’s work on NXT Battleground was relatively small. She opened the show, but it was very brief. The rest of her appearances were in backstage segments. However, she did come out at the end to congratulate Trick Williams on retaining the NXT Championship.

It is being claimed that WWE has plans to utilize Sexyy Red on future NXT shows. The arrest, at the time they heard about it, was not supposed to impact any of this for her. The problem was that the video of the incident had not been released at that time. Therefore, it is possible that WWE might not be as willing to use her after seeing her role in the video, even if she was not the main culprit.

We also still have no idea what started the fight, or if Red was involved at the beginning of the incident in any way. At least when it comes to the footage we have available to us at the moment, if anything, this might make WWE hold back on using her for the time being. That does not mean they’ll rule out something when the dust settles here.

WHO IS SEXYY RED?

If you’re like most NXT fans who saw the shows as of late, you might be wondering who Sexyy Red is. To be fair, you’re not alone as she is relatively new to the music industry entirely. WWE has been known to work with some newer or lesser-known bands/artists. Yet this might be the first time they did so with a new hip-hop artist that they were not using for an entrance theme or PLE song. Most of Red’s success is small, if we’re being frank.

It took Nicki Minaj appearing on a single for her name to become big enough to care about. She had also been touring with Drake, opening for him. While this used to be a big deal, it isn’t as much as it used to be due to Drake’s recent…well, “drama.” We’ll leave it at that.

While she appeared on some charts for rap and hip-hop, this did not mean as much as some like to assume. So far, Red has sold roughly 28,000 albums.

She had sold some singles that did well. The rest of her success comes from free plays of her music via YouTube or Spotify.

A GOOD LABEL HELPS:

Her singles like “Get it Sexy” & “Pound Town 2” have Drake or Minaj on the track and in the video. This obviously helped viewership, which anyone can see. It also helps that she is signed to the Gamma Label. This is the same label Snoop Dogg, Usher, Rick Ross, & French Montana are on. They even have a distribution deal with Death Row Records, so one could assume the label has some money.

They have a small list of artists, which likely means they’ll fork over money or cut deals with corporations to help their artists. This very well could be how she ended up on WWE programming, especially considering WWE has been more than willing to accept sponsorship opportunities. In fact, WWE has been open to accepting a wide variety of money-making opportunities with sponsorships they never would have done before.

Heck, the Prime Logo in the middle of the ring for PLEs alone is something WWE never did before. UFC obviously used their whole octagon for sponsors and used to allow this on all of the fighter shorts. At least until the deal with Reebok, now with Venom among others.

All that being said, the work with Sexyy Red is very likely part of a new sponsorship, as she is not someone WWE would normally affiliate with. Not that they wouldn’t use a hip-hop artist. Rather, just not someone at Red’s current level. This deal most certainly helps Red way more than WWE.