What’s the story?
On the January 9th edition of Monday Night Raw, Chris Jericho and Kevin Owens took on Roman Reigns in a handicap match in the main event. Reigns’ WWE United States Championship was on the line and was won by Chris Jericho.
They did a live shot in the crowd and found a guy that was celebrating Jericho’s win. However, on this week’s Monday Night Raw, the WWE video team did a little editing as seen below thanks to Twitter user @solomonster (Courtesy: TJRWrestling)
In case you didn’t know...
The WWE has changed reactions of the crowd before, but not typically in this fashion. The most common case would be back when SmackDown was taped on Tuesdays and aired on Thursdays.
Wrestlers such as Roman Reigns would be booed by a lot of crowds, but in an effort to portray them as the good guys, the boos would be edited into fake crowd cheers by the WWE.
The heart of the matter
It makes sense that the WWE would resort to such measures. The promotion sees Roman Reigns as the next John Cena (so to speak) and wants to portray him as a good guy. Therefore, the company attempts subtle things to make fans watching at home believe he’s the good guy here, who should be cheered.
What’s next?
Nothing will really come of this as Vince McMahon is pretty set in his ways, but it does provide for some unintentional comedy.
Sportskeeda’s Take
While it’s a ridiculous thing to intentionally do, it really doesn’t hurt anyone in the long run. It’s funny to see the side-by-side comparison, but Vince McMahon has to realise that it is things like this that cause the WWE Universe to unjustly boo Roman Reigns because he’s perceived as the golden boy.
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