Why Did Vince McMahon Rewrite Raw This Week?

Quite like last week, Vince McMahon wrote much of Raw himself. This week’s show was rewritten again at the last minute but this time it was because of the passing of George H. W. Bush, who served as the 41st President of the United States (1989 to 1993).

The original script had more segments with heels going over.

“This week’s Raw was completely rewritten by Vince at the last minute,” Dave Meltzer said on Wrestling Observer Radio.

“He didn’t even show up until 3:30 because he was visiting with his mom. So he got there at 3:30 central time and the show started at 7 central time. So he’s there three and a half hours before the show and he shows up and the basic gist of everything is that his feeling was that, ‘We’re in Houston, Texas and President Bush just died and people are gonna be in a somber mood so we’re going to have to make them happy.'”

Meltzer continued, “[Finn Balor] got to win his match [and] Ronda Rousey stood tall at the end of the show. He made whole scale changes of what the original script was for more happiness.”

Balor beat Jinder Mahal in a singles match, whereas Rousey teamed with Ember Moon to beat Nia Jax and Tamina.

The presumption is that Drew McIntyre was originally supposed to beat Dolph Ziggler but that was not confirmed by WWE sources.

Meltzer added, “Babyfaces did much better because Vince felt they had to do it that night. He just felt that you had to give the people a show that they would go home happy on because he just respected the fact that those people were going through a tough time with Bush passing away.”