Did WWE Cross A Line On Raw Last Night?

Dean Ambrose's comments about Roman Reigns' leukaemia were not in the best taste.

Dean Ambrose Raw Promo
WWE

At one point during last night's episode of Raw, the newly-minted 'evil' Dean Ambrose stuffed a hankie to his nose, dramatically hamming it up as he questioned the hideous stench coming from the Los Angeles crowd.

"What's that smell?!" Dean mugged, as the audience tepidly played along. It was the typical infantile stylings of WWE's crack team of TV writers - the very same who'd penned a man to literally p*ss himself the night prior - but besides being offensively bad, it was inoffensive in itself.

It was another line of Dean's earlier in the night which really got up people's nose - and not without reason.

After a feather-spitting Seth Rollins called his ex-Shield buddy out, Ambrose appeared on the big screen to finally extenuate his actions. Mean Dean intimated that for all The Shield were the vigilante do-gooders of the WWE Universe, once the cameras stopped rolling, they were a bunch of wrong 'uns. "We were rotten to the core from the very beginning," he admitted. "And now we're all going to pay for it in different ways. What goes around comes back around."

The promo was already drifting into sensitive territory, before Ambrose launched his ultimate broadside:

"I mean, look at Roman. For what [he] did in The Shield, he has to answer to the man upstairs."

Regardless of what Roman supposedly 'did' behind the scenes, there was an uncomfortable conclusion to be drawn from extrapolating Ambrose's comment: essentially, he was saying cancer is a punishment from God.

There was a brief, stunned silence as toes curled around the Staples Center.

It's worth noting that Ambrose's Glenn Hoddle moment was almost certainly approved by the man himself - or at the very least, Roman Reigns. It's also worth noting that his opinion is not endorsed by WWE, but is a belief held by his character - an on-screen baddie. Does that make it fair ground?

[CONT'D. P1/4]

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Editorial Team
Editorial Team

Benjamin was born in 1987, and is still not dead. He variously enjoys classical music, old-school adventure games (they're not dead), and walks on the beach (albeit short - asthma, you know). He's currently trying to compile a comprehensive history of video game music, yet denies accusations that he purposefully targets niche audiences. He's often wrong about these things.