After being drafted to Monday Night Raw on Tuesday, Cesaro went off script to rant about the way the WWE is being managed.
First, Cesaro complained about his placement in the draft, namely the fact that he was not picked until the sixth round even though he feels he should have been in the top 10. He also says that he thinks he would have been a better fit for SmackDown.
Cesaro went on to complain about all of the drama between Mick Foley, Daniel Bryan, Stephanie McMahon and Shane McMahon, saying that the WWE should be be about the wrestlers, not about the management.
“I think Raw going forward needs to be about the superstars,” he said. “It needs to be about the performers in the ring and not about how Stephanie and Mick Foley coexist. They need to be there to mediate and make the best show, but that does not need to be the focus. The focus should be on the superstars who got drafted.”
As soon as this happened, WWE fans immediately began to debate whether this was scripted or if Cesaro was expressing real frustrations. Dave Meltzer of The Wrestling Observer reports that it was the latter, saying that the Cesaro rant was a shoot, the term for an unplanned or unscripted event.
However, the WWE couldn’t have been too unhappy with what Cesaro said, as they were willing to upload a clip of his rant on their official YouTube channel (although they did wait until the following day to upload the video, whereas other clips were uploaded much sooner). Vince McMahon reportedly loves to embrace real-life drama like this if he feels it would make for a good storyline, and so this may well be the start of a new angle for Cesaro going forward, even if this initial moment was unscripted.
Cesaro is not the only one who is apparently frustrated with the WWE. Sasha Banks, who was also drafted to Monday Night Raw, posted Cesaro’s rant on Twitter and wrote, “You’re speaking my language.” This was before the WWE had even officially released the clip to viewers.
Still, some fans are speculating that all of this is a work and that various wrestlers’ frustrations with the company will become a storyline going forward.
“Perhaps this disgruntled superstar thing is a total work and eventually they will land with these superstars refusing to work unless they can go to [SmackDown],” one Reddit user wrote.
If this does makes it way onto the show, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time the WWE incorporated real-life concerns into their programs. Earlier this year, A.J. Styles complained on Raw that John Cena tends to “bury” performers, something that has been said off-camera for years.
