WWE.com Sheamus and Cesaro faced The Hardy Boyz at Great Balls of Fire.
At WWE’s Great Balls of Fire pay-per-view tonight, there was a strange moment in which the referee seemed to count to three, yet this was not recorded as a fall. So what happened here? Was a mistake made?
Towards the end of the 30-minute Iron Man match between The Hardy Boyz and Cesaro and Sheamus, Matt Hardy jumped off the top rope and landed on Sheamus. It looked like he was all set to score a pin. Then, the referee apparently counts to three, with the crowd chanting to three and everything. However, The Hardy Boyz inexplicably do not get the pin.
Looking back at the video footage, here’s what seems to happen: when Matt Hardy lands, the referee puts his hand down on the mat, which the crowd interprets as the first count, yelling, “one!” It sure looks like a count was being made, and in any normal circumstance, the referee putting his hand on the mat after a wrestler lands on another wrestler would be the “one” count.
But the referee evidently did not consider that to be count one; he technically did not fully slam on the mat like one normally would. He then hits the mat twice, but the crowd chants up to “three,” having thought the original hand movement was the first count. That was a reasonable interpretation to have, but technically, it looks like he was just supposed to be moving his arm over and not making a full count.
Here’s what the referee’s first hand movement on the mat looked like. As you can see, his arm fully makes contact with the mat, but he does not completely slam down on it like he does for the actual counts:
Matt Hardy attempts to score a pin on Sheamus at Great Balls of Fire.
Then, Cesaro jumps in and pushes Matt Hardy over. The referee does not give The Hardy Boyz the pin, because from his point-of-view, Cesrao prevented him from getting to count three, even though it looked to pretty much everyone at home like he got to three.
It appears that Cesaro was probably meant to jump in and prevent Matt Hardy from scoring this fall earlier, but his timing was probably a bit off, causing the referee to stall a bit when he normally would have immediately started counting.
Clearly, the crowd was not happy with this, and moments later, they could be heard chanting, “Ref, you suck!” The crowd also began to boo, and many held up three fingers indicating that they thought the third count was reached.
UPDATE: This article has been edited to reflect the fact that upon further review of the video footage, the referee did not fully make his first count and therefore did not get to three counts before Cesaro stepped in.