Justin Roberts is a former WWE ring announcer. (WWE.com)
Former WWE ring announcer Justin Roberts this week criticized his former boss, Vince McMahon, saying that the WWE CEO doesn’t care what fans have to say.
In an interview with Memorabilia Guy to promote his upcoming book Best Seat In The House, Roberts says what a lot of WWE fans have been feeling: that Vince McMahon is not interested in tailoring the show to what the viewers actually want to see.
“As an example, say the crowd really like Cesaro but the company wants you to like Sheamus so they are going to give you Sheamus until you like him in the same way you like Cesaro,” Roberts said. “Look at Roman Reigns, the company wants you to accept him, but if you like someone else, no you have to like who the company wants you to like. The fans aren’t getting a show that is catered for them, it’s catered to running with the guys who they want to push.”
When asked why he thinks this is, Roberts said that the higher-ups at the company feel that they will run things the way they want to run it and that the fans will not tell them what to do.
Roberts also said that the WWE could put on a WrestleMania-quality event every week with the talent that they have, but instead, Monday Night Raw is “really flat for three hours and once in while the crowd kind of like some of it” and even when he was working there, Raw was often “[t]he same stuff every week and it just wasn’t entertaining.”
Another one of his criticisms of the modern product is that the company does not fully commit to people being babyfaces or heels.
“Look at Triple H he is this big babyface with NXT and on Twitter, then he is this heel on Monday Night Raw,” Roberts says. “Stephanie McMahon is this horrible person on the show but then she’s showing how great a person she is on social media. It’s really hard to follow and it’s hard to get behind these characters.”
Roberts also reveals that Vince McMahon frequently makes changes to the Monday Night Raw script as the show is actually airing, keeping many people, including ring announcers, in the dark.
“I’d do Monday Night Raw and go on the air many times without a script because they would rewrite the show while it was happening,” he said. “I couldn’t prepare and it was hard to ask questions and not many people had answers. Even if you did ask questions upper management were not too keen. So I was left out of the loop and left to sink or swim. This was live TV.”
The reason for all these changes, Roberts says, was that Vince McMahon would tell the writers he doesn’t like the show on Monday, and so adjustments had to be made at the very last minute.
Check out the full interview with Justin Roberts on the Memorabilia Guy website. Justin Roberts’ book will be available on April 1st.