WWE Will See Major Raw Reaction As “A Positive”

The ending to WrestleMania 39 proved to be one of the most controversial in years as Roman Reigns – with a bit of help from Solo Sikoa – stopped Cody Rhodes from finishing his story and becoming Undisputed WWE Universal Championship.

But that devastating loss for The American Nightmare’s fans was just the start of a whirlwind 24 hours in WWE history. On Monday morning following WrestleMania, the news broke that a deal had been signed that would see Endeavor take over the company and merge it with UFC.

Vince McMahon is to become Executive Chairman of the new parent company of WWE and UFC and at Monday Night Raw, McMahon was said to be “firmly back in charge” of creative with several last-minute changes made to the show.

McMahon’s return prompted an outpouring of anger from many fans as “Fire Vince” trended online given previous scandals that saw him accused of sexual assault and rape – the latter accusation recently ended in McMahon paying several million dollars to a former WWE referee.

The show was also the worst rated of any Raw in history on cagematch.net and while the on-screen action might not have been as bad as some other shows, the rating was surely people expressing their unhappiness about over-riding events in the company.

According to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer, despite much of the reaction being negative, WWE will be happy there was that strong a reaction either way:

“I promise you, the fact there has been so much discussion they will only see as a positive. If there was no discussion, they’d be shaking their heads thinking what went wrong. If it was a misfire, history will tell us, but right now the reaction is what they wanted.”

Raw ended with another bad night for Cody Rhodes as he was viciously and brutally attacked by Brock Lesnar after Lesnar had originally agreed to be his tag team partner to face Reigns and Sikoa.