WWE News: WWE Apologizes To The Russian People For Russian Flag Incident On WWE RAW
WWE may have gone to the extreme to show that America was awesome on Monday when The Big Show tore down the Russian Flag live on WWE RAW. Most of the crowd thought it was awesome, because WWE Superstar Rusev had been taking out all American wrestlers. His manager and WWE’s resident short skirt expert Lana would then talk up Russia as the best country in the world, led by the best leader, in her eyes, Vladimir Putin.
When Big Show took down the Russian Flag, people in the audience cheered. This was the first time America got the leg up storyline wise, over Russia in this angle with Rusev. While Rusev is Bulgarian and WWE has made this known for some time, he moved his loyalty to Russia. You can’t blame him, he does have a leggy blonde named Lana who was basically leading him astray. Ah, the story of a man controlled by the love he has for an attractive woman. Really, we could call him the victim.
Rusev took out the All-American Jack Swagger and former Olympian Mark Henry in recent months. However, no one has come close enough to beating him. Then, Big Show entered. The 7 foot, near 500 lb. monster has been known to settle the score when needed. So a man like Rusev is not new to the WWE veteran. Show knocked Rusev out on SmackDown last week, and had the leg up on him at RAW. Then, he took down the flag to our happy applause.
However, WWE then had to, for some reason, do damage control. Despite making Americans look weak in recent months and having a dictator praised on WWE programming, WWE felt it was needed to apologize to the Russian people, saying…
‘We at WWE would like to apologize to the Russian people for the incident on Monday Night Raw that could have been construed as disrespect for their nation’s flag.”
This comes after real life events of Russia bulling other countries and then forcing some to join them, such as Crimea. The Ukraine has also had it’s fair share of issues with the Russian government, and yet WWE ignored all of the horrific things Russia has done to apologize to them. Why? WWE has no problem in disrespecting Americans or the flag even. We’ve even seen it drop on the ground before. Yet nothing.
Also, this is not the first time WWE has run into issues with flags. Shawn Michaels and Canada have not been known to mix, mostly due to the Montreal Screwjob, but the Canadian people weren’t happy with him for some time due to him picking his nose with the Canadian Flag on RAW years ago. No press release came out because of that and there was barely any acknowledgement. Chris Jericho disrespected the Brazilian Flag in Brazil. WWE did end up reprimanding Jericho for his actions and apologized to Brazil for it. However, this did occur at a live event in the country. Of which Jericho was close to facing criminal charges for, due to Brazilian law.
Today, it seems the WWE has found itself in a position where they have to be very PC and make sure they do not cross the line. So it makes sense that WWE Corporate would want to send out a message to the people of Russia, basically saying, no hard feelings. They have not said similar to the American people for recent issues, so I do wonder if that will be referenced by WWE’s Corporate Office any time soon.
[IMG Credits: 411Mania.com, primaryignition.com]
