Well, it’s almost been 24 hours. The red light is no longer burning your brains like a Kenny Rogers Chicken Roaster sign, and hopefully the anger towards WWE has dissipated a bit…
An unexpected ruling stopped the battle between @WWERollins and #TheFiend @WWEBrayWyatt, but it couldn’t stop what came next at #HIAC. https://t.co/30MeyvvAIn pic.twitter.com/73v9BkIXlH
— WWE (@WWE) October 7, 2019
It was not a good night for WWE. The fans at the Golden 1 Arena in Sacramento were pissed off and made their voices heard throughout the end of the PPV. Fans at home took to Twitter to show their annoyance and out-right rage with yet another #cancelwwenetwork campaign (we’ve been down this road before), with endless threats to jump ship to AEW.
I wrote about it after the event, that this had a bit of a feel of the “Mick Foley isn’t going to put butts in seats” but wasn’t quite at that extreme yet, but a series of these awful booking decisions very well could lead to something similar. Following just the #HIAC trend on Twitter would lead you to believe that this is actually the case, with some of the heated anger that was responding to that. Fans were not happy, and they had a right to feel that way. The intriguing question is whether that anger will carry over into Monday Night Raw tonight. Fans certainly have the opportunity to hijack the show from the get-go and try and make a statement if they want to, and though I personally am against that sort of thing, tonight actually might be the appropriate night to do it.
What we do know is that there’s going to be a lot of… fury… regardless in Bakersfield tonight… 😉
TONIGHT @Tyson_Fury has an open microphone on #RAW to address his issues with @BraunStrowman LIVE at 8/7c on @USA_Network! https://t.co/FRqQcMryQ7
— WWE (@WWE) October 7, 2019
This might be the more frustrating thing for fans: the perception is that they bury Bray Wyatt and Kofi Kingston in order to pivot to promoting Tyson Fury and Cain Valasquez instead; more talented wrestlers on the roster getting the shaft in order to cross-promote with other combat sport athletes. Time will only tell to see if this is actually the case, and if they have taken any of the criticism from the end of last night’s event into consideration. Conventional wisdom certainly says “no,” and there isn’t any reason to believe this will be any different.
I was hoping to tune into Raw tonight to see the start of “The Fiend” championship era and how they were going to approach that. Instead, I’ll be tuning to see how both company and fans alike respond to the shitshow ending from last night.
Either way, I’ll be eagerly tuning into Raw. So I suppose they’re getting what they want in the end, right…?
Sometimes you just have to wonder how much we’re all getting worked. I guess in the end, #lifesawork.