This year’s Raw After WrestleMania featured a hot opening angle, a nice men’s tag team title match, the return of Matt Riddle and a somewhat confounding final twist, but not much else generally associated with this particular show. Now we know we have Vince McMahon to thank … or blame, as the case may be.
That shouldn’t be since Paul “Triple H” Levesque took over as head of creative last year. Yet despite critical acclaim for most of what Levesque has done in that role – and likely emboldened by the news that WWE has been sold to Endeavor — McMahon was back in the driver’s seat for the Raw After WrestleMania, calling the shots behind the scenes.
Dave Meltzer said Tuesday on Wrestling Observer Radio that McMahon was “running TV” for Raw After WrestleMania, changing the planned show segments when he arrived at Crypto.com Arena and again as the episode played out. His comments came on the heels of a PW Insider report suggesting that Levesque started the night as the voice in people’s headsets but was replaced by McMahon later.
‘He’s back,” Meltzer said. ‘It’s what it was. It will be what it was before. And if people think that was bad, it will be bad. And that’s just the way it is.”
Online reaction to the show was largely negative, with numerous people panning the lack of big surprises and questioning the motivations behind Brock Lesnar’s show-ending turn and destruction of Cody Rhodes. Some talents told PW Insider they felt a ‘huge negative shift in morale” had also taken place given the switch.
The question is whether any of that will even matter. Raw After WrestleMania turned in tremendous ratings, the best the show has seen this year except for Raw XXX. People certainly wanted to see what would happen Monday night.
McMahon sounds like he could very well be leading the charge to try convincing those viewers to stick around. And even if people within WWE don’t like it, there’s very little they can do about it.