More Details On WWE Changing April 10th Raw Due To Travel Issues

There were some big changes to the April 10th edition of Raw and more details have emerged about who was missing from the show.

The April 10th edition of WWE Monday Night Raw took place at the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, which is in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. A lot of the WWE roster lives in Florida in the southeast part of the US, so Seattle is the farthest distance for any show in the US.

Last weekend was also a rare weekend off for WWE superstars since the company gave them a break following a busy WrestleMania weekend to begin April. While some people likely made the trek to Seattle on Sunday night, some of them were scheduled for flights on Monday and they didn’t make it due to travel issues.

Prior to Monday’s Raw, it was reported that about 33% of the roster scheduled for Raw didn’t make it, so it forced WWE to change things up. For example, Sami Zayn was supposed to face Solo Sikoa on Raw, but with Sami dealing with travel issues, Kevin Owens took Sami’s spot and Sami was able to make it before the end of the show.

In this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer shed some light on what was changed.

“The Raw in Seattle was switched around a ton, but not because of McMahon, as much as the perils of having so much of the talent living in the same city ended up as a big problem with a flight delay. Zayn, Riddle, Priest, Ripley, Belair, Legado del Fantasma and the Street Profits were all booked on the same flights from Orlando to Seattle. Due to a huge delay, by the time they arrived at the building, it was the middle of the third hour of the show. The show was rewritten and most were kept off the show.”

“They did get Zayn and Riddle doing a run-in at the end of the show to save Owens with the idea they had just arrived at the building. At the start of the show they announced that a lot of the talent wasn’t there due to transpiration problems, which was acknowledged because they did expect Zayn and Riddle to arrive at the end of the show so they teased that neither were there (and they weren’t) throughout the show to build the run-in. Gargano and LeRae, who also live in Orlando, weren’t booked on the show.”

As Meltzer continued, he also mentioned others that were at Raw that weren’t used while noting that some people flew immediately out of Seattle after Raw due to the red-eye flights they were booked on to go back home.

“Most weekends you wouldn’t have this problem since most of the talent is on the road doing house shows not far from the TV site. But with no house shows and Easter on Sunday, they booked flights first thing Monday morning rather than the night before. Worse, all the talent from Orlando were booked on red-eye flights back to Orlando after the show, meaning they spent all day traveling, got to Seattle, were late and couldn’t work (aside from Riddle and Zayn doing the run-in) and then went back to the airport and flew home.”

“Ripley may not have been on the show as she’s now considered a Smackdown talent, although those designations are kind of meaningless when the Usos, Zayn, Owens and Rhodes are the key full-timers and all but Rhodes are on both major shows every week. Corbin and Elias were there but not used.”

“Miz wasn’t there either and was pulled from the show before the other issues, but Miz vs. Riddle, advertised last week, was pulled from advertising late so that was a planned change. Some of the other matches were different. The original idea was Mysterio & Wilde & Del Toro vs. Priest & Balor & Dominik. They did a good job under the circumstances of doing a show that did appear to not have any real issues and was changed and thrown together at the last minute.”

It’s another reminder that the life of a WWE superstar isn’t an easy one.