Roman Reigns returned to solo competition at Wrestlemania 35. He won his match against Drew McIntyre at the biggest event in live sports entertainment that took place at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. It set an all-time new record in terms of attendance and revenue generation making it one of the most successful events hosted by the WWE.
Why Undertaker appeared on Raw?
The most significant part of this success was that the so-called cornerstones of Wrestlemania show were not in major roles, this year. The Undertaker was not part of the show after almost two decades whereas John Cena did not compete in a match. He was just part of a short segment with Elias putting him down with Five Knuckle Shuffle and an Attitude Adjustment.
As for the current franchise player of WWE Roman Reigns, he was not part of a heavyweight match, too. WWE did not include him in the championship picture after returning from the Leukemia situation. So they pit him against Drew McIntyre to bring out the much-needed win out of him. But he was not present during the post-Wrestlemania episode of Monday Night Raw.
It was quite odd not seeing the poster boy of the company on such a special night. But, WWE did have reasons for doing so. Brad Shepard said on Oh, You Didn’t Know Podcast that the reason why WWE kept Roman Reigns off this past edition of WWE Raw. Apparently, the officials were not sure about the crowd giving positive reactions to The Big Dog, (courtesy ringsidenews.com)
“There actually was not a lot of crowd reaction during his match with Drew [at WrestleMania]. I think a lot of that had to do with frankly a situation in the crowd — I’m not trying to be rude — but they intentionally kept him off of TV and RAW.”
Well, we can’t deny the concerns of the officials. Roman Reigns did come out in public once WWE Raw went off the air. It was a send-off segment for Dean Ambrose who was leaving the company. Seth Rollins was also present in the segment in which the crowd greeted Reigns with a thunderous amount of boos. Here’s more from the source,
“Now, of course, they did the after a RAW moment with Dean and Seth, but that’s why they kept him off they didn’t want him to — you know the RAW after Mania crowd is brutal. Look what they did… they crapped all over Kofi Kingston and I’m gonna get into that in a minute because that’s f*cking bullsh*t and this is exactly what WWE deserves.”
We want to mention that a massive fight broke out in the crowd during Roman Reigns vs. Drew McIntyre at WrestleMania 35. The audience sitting in the upper deck were booing the two superstars although they were having a decent match going on. So the officials did want to protect the poster boy from negative reactions, the very next night. We’ll see whether the same reactions continue for him in the following weeks.
