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What's the story?
WWE officials have been known to call audibles in matches before because of injury but it appears that at a recent NXT Live event the company decided to change the finish based on the crowd reaction.
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In case you didn't know...
The referee has an earpiece in that allows him to talk to officials backstage and he can then pass on messages to WWE superstars. This means that if there is an injury or a reason why a match needs to be ended quickly then he is able to relay the message from the officials to the superstars.
This has helped on a number of occasions, but there are also issues sometimes where wrestlers themselves have to think fast and end the match much like when Chris Jericho faced Neville and the British star suffered an ankle injury. Jericho forced to disqualification because the referee wouldn't count the three for him.
The heart of the matter
At a recent live event, Kassius Ohno took on Chad Lail and even though the latter was slated to be the heel in the match, the star was so over with the crowd that Dave Meltzer revealed on a recent episode of The Wrestling Observer that the company called an audible and decided to change the finish of the match mid-way through. (transcript via RingsideNews)
"There were a couple of fans in the very beginning going, ‘Chad, Chad, Chad’ for whatever reason. More and more people jumped in and pretty soon everyone is doing this. Chad Lail is heel in NXT but he’s never on TV so you wouldn’t know that and Ohno ia a babyface. So they’re doing this. In the middle of the match, all of a sudden it just flips. Ohno starts playing heel and loses. They just changed the match — completely changed everything on the fly. Yes, that’s what they did and Ohno would have won. Ohno always beats Lail and he lost. They changed the finish just so that the crowd would be real happy and they were."
What's next?
Lail doesn't appear on WWE TV very often and Ohno recently lost his match that he requested against Tomasso Ciampa, so it's unknown what the future holds for the two stars.
Author's take
This is probably something that happens all the time in WWE, but it isn't as apparent. The company has to tools to be able to give the fans what they want nowadays but the issue with changing outcomes for the sake of the crowd is that once that happens the WWE Universe will think that they can control the storylines as well and that can cause even bigger issues. If this is a one-off then it isn't that bad, but WWE shouldn't get into a habit of doing it.
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