Haley Cavinder chooses college hoops return at TCU over WWE

Though she had been training for WWE with sister Hanna, Haley Cavinder will return to play college basketball at TCU next season.

Perhaps the Cavinder Twins will still end up in a WWE ring someday. It just won’t happen for a few more years, at minimum.

Haley and Hanna Cavinder were arguably the highest profile WWE Next in Line signees to date thanks to their status as NIL pioneers and large social media following. But even though they seemed committed to training for pro wrestling this spring (and have already made one very brief appearance on NXT), something happened that will definitely delay any WWE plans — one of the twins has unfinished business on the basketball court.

After announcing that she planned on returning for her final year of college basketball eligibility earlier this year, Haley Cavinder revealed today that she will play for TCU.

Since she almost certainly won’t be granted eligibility to play in the current college basketball season, that means that she’ll join the TCU team for the 2024-25 campaign. Obviously, that likely means it will two years, at least, before Haley would return to training for WWE.

Both Cavinder twins played basketball together at Fresno State and Miami. However, Haley was always the more accomplished of the two, as she was Mountain West Player of the Year in 2021 and Miami’s leading scorer during its surprising Elite Eight run last season.

That always made it feel like Haley may have regretted not returning to the court for her final year of college eligibility, and though the sisters had previously always said publicly that they’d continue their journey through life together, that’s not going to be the way it turns out for now.

Hanna Cavinder could, of course, keep training for a wrestling career on her own, but that remains to be seen. One thing that’s almost certain for now is that any thought of the Cavinders as a next gen version of the Bella Twins in WWE has almost certainly been kicked down the road a few years, if it hasn’t been squashed altogether.