WWE News: Brock Lesnar Vs. Undertaker ‘SummerSlam’ Match Being Censored On WWE Network
When you become a subscriber to the WWE Network, you instantly gain access to most of WWE’s video library, including all of the pay-per-views in the history of the company. You can see all the edgy stuff from the Attitude Era, and you can even watch all of the Chris Benoit matches that you’d ever want to watch. But, apparently, you can’t watch Brock Lesnar flipping the bird to The Undertaker just before he passed out at SummerSlam eight days ago.
Every pay-per-view that’s archived on the WWE Network is supposed to be in its original form. In other words, they’re supposed to be unedited. However, Dave Meltzer of theWrestling Observer is reporting that this isn’t the case with this year’s SummerSlam, as WWE has decided to edit out The New Day’s parody of “Empire State of Mind” and Brock Lesnar’s middle finger to The Undertaker.
“The WWE Network’s airing of SummerSlam that is up right now has edited out The New Day’s song parody of ‘Empire State of Mind.’ They also edited out Brock Lesnar flipping off Undertaker right before the finish of that match. That’s weird because there are tons of episodes of Steve Austin flipping people off up in the archives.”
Everybody expected that Lesnar’s middle finger would be edited out of the footage that WWE decided to show on RAW, as WWE has been a PG product for quite some time now, but nobody thought that it would be edited out of the archives on the WWE Network.
As Meltzer said, there’s really no reason why WWE should edit out Lesnar’s “show of disrespect” to The Undertaker if they’re allowing “Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s one-finger salute to be uncensored on the WWE Network. Furthermore, if they’re going to allow Chris Benoit’s matches on the WWE Network after completely removing him from the company’s history for so long, you would think that they would allow a middle finger, especially since it was such a memorable part of the match.
Up to this point, the only thing that has been edited out of past WWE shows that are archived on the Network have been songs that the company doesn’t have the rights to use. For example, if you watch WrestleMania 25, the song “Shoot to Thrill” by AC/DC, which was the show’s theme song, is edited out of the show. But, other than music, everything has pretty much been left alone.
[Images via WWE]
