The Fiend removed from WWE's pre-watershed programming

In recent weeks, WWE's presence on television in the UK and Ireland has been much more substantial - with early morning highlights of RAW and SmackDown being shown on free-to-air television for the first time ever.

While BT Sport is the exclusive provider of live WWE programming in the UK, both BT Sport and Channel 5 show highlights following the live shows throughout the week - with both post-watershed and pre-watershed versions of RAW, SmackDown, NXT and NXT UK airing.

While WWE is PG, the pre-watershed showings obviously require that several scenes be edited, with the most notable being scenes involving weapons - like chair shots or performers being put through tables - and swear words being censored.

Literally the only notable changes from the post-watershed to pre-watershed programming are:

- Shots with weapons (chairs, tables, etc) are removed
- Swearing is censored
- Scenes featuring The Fiend are removed
— Gary Cassidy (@consciousgary) February 20, 2020

An interesting note, though, is that, during highlights of WWE SmackDown, which airs at 10am on Sundays on BT Sport and 10:25am on Channel 5, on Saturdays one week removed one character has been notable by their absence, Bray Wyatt's "Fiend".

While Firefly Fun House segments are still included in the post-watershed episodes, the flashes of The Fiend are completely removed from the segments.

These scenes remain in the post-watershed highlights on BT Sport, but are removed from the pre-watershed highlights for both BT Sport and Channel 5.

Published 21 Feb 2020, 02:11 IST

WWE SmackDown Bray Wyatt (The Fiend)