Former WWE writer reveals original plan for Akira Tozawa to stage his death

WWE originally planned a storyline for Akira Tozawa to stage his own death.

WWE's 24/7 Title division has had some crazy storylines go down on Monday Night RAW over the years, but none of them involved anyone staging their death. But it actually almost happened.

Former WWE writer Matt McCarthy was a recent guest on the Universal Wrestling Podcast to discuss a wide variety of subjects. While talking about the 24/7 division, McCarthy spoke of a storyline that was pitched for Akira Tozawa to stage his own death on RAW to win back the championship.

"I was doing a lot of the 24/7 stuff, and sometimes, when you’re there, if you just give the man [Vince McMahon] what he wants, you have freedom to do whatever with it. If there’s like one thing he wants and you give it to him, he’s happy," Matt McCarthy said. "I knew he wanted to do an off-site during the pandemic era at the beach. So, I pitched a 24/7 off-site there. Obviously, Tozawa was eaten by a shark. Not my idea, but, it’s like when you get an idea that’s like out there like that, that’s like so insane, it kind of gives you a certain level of freedom, so I was like, ‘Oh, we can do a funeral for Tozawa, where he wins the title back and he staged his death.’"

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Why the Akira Tozawa storyline didn't happen

McCarthy put a lot of time and effort into this storyline for Akira Tozawa. It ultimately got scrapped because Randy Orton had the majority of the production team working with him on his backstage segments.

"So I wrote out a whole four-part thread," Matt McCarthy continued. "In part of it, you realize that Tozawa had a secret affair with Billie Kay, who we had come in for it. It would be really emotional, and we had like all this stuff planned and I was using Titus in it… Lo and behold, because of the Randy Orton Rainbow 6 sniper killings that he was doing to everyone backstage, we had to cancel it because it was maybe going to be too much on production to have both. Not being able to do that funeral is one of those ideas, as dumb as it sounds, that I wish we could have nailed." [H/T: Ringside News]

You have to wonder how the WWE Universe would have taken to this storyline for Akira Tozawa. Who knows what other crazy 24/7 segments have been scrapped over the past few years, and we'll probably never find out.