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What's the story?
WWE is a strange place that might not be understandable at all to a person who is not a fan of the wrestling promotion.
They make changes in names, which seldom if ever, go down well with the fans.
Mustafa Ali, Apollo Crews, and Andrade have all been victims of such name changes. The latest victims were the War Raiders upon their Monday Night RAW debut. Their name was changed to 'Viking Experience' much to the confusion of the fans.
Mick Foley praised them for an otherwise successful first performance on the main roster, only to receive heat. He has since gone onto Facebook to explain what he thought was the reason for their change in name.
In case you didn't know...
This week's episode of WWE RAW was based on the WWE Superstar ShakeUp, which saw quite the change to the WWE RAW roster.
One of the biggest changes that could be seen was that the NXT Tag Team Champions' name was changed on the main roster upon their debut. Instead of being known as the 'War Raiders' as they are on NXT, they were called 'The Viking Experience'.
There was talk of the name 'Berzerker' also being considered, but it fell through.
This name garnered intense criticism from fans, as they expressed their displeasure on social media. Even the name of Rowe and Hansen was changed to Ivar and Erik instead.
The heart of the matter
He said that he knew the name was not a good one, but it made people talk about the War Raiders.
Not only that, he said that he might know the reason that the team was named such.
"For those of you who were sleeping, the #WarRaiders were transformed into the #VikingExperience for the WWE Raw debut, and many fans were not happy about it. I put out a little tweet, just being happy that two hard-working guys had made their debut on #Raw -and you would have thought I just praised John Cena with the heat I got for it! My guess is that anything with the word “war” in it is not going to go down well with USA Network or current and potential sponsors.”
He said that since their original name had the word 'War' in it, it might not have gone down quite so well with USA Network and others who might want to sponsor the show.
SInce, they were on WWE Network's NXT for so long, their names were never an issue before this.
What's next?
The War Raiders... The Viking Experience will look to continue their dominating impact on the main roster, and force the fans to look past their names onto their performances.
Hopefully, as it looks like the Riott Squad is all going their separate ways, the Viking Experience may be joined by yet another member - Sarah Logan. Sarah Logan is a self-proclaimed Viking enthusiast, and while this is pure speculation at this point, could very well end up joining the Viking Experience - after all, her real-life husband is none other than Rowe, and given WWE's tendency to pair-off real-life couples this could be a promising new direction for Logan.
This might even lead to a run on Total Divas later.
