WWE News: Update on Roman Reigns’ ‘Tater Tots’ Promo

Last week on Monday Night RAW, WWE World Heavyweight champion Sheamus and Roman Reigns were involved in the closing segment of the show. The segment drew criticism on various forms of social media for being “too long” and not accomplishing much as it was the final show before WWE TLC.

The main source of criticism came from one of Reigns’ lines in his promo directed at Sheamus, telling the “Irish Warrior” that “”I thought the Irish had potatoes, but you’re smuggling tater tots.” The reference was obviously in reference to Sheamus’ Irish heritage, but it did little to impress the WWE Universe.

According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter (viaDaily Wrestling News), the WWE’s actual intention was to have fans chant “tater tots” after Reigns’ promo — which they did. Daily Wrestling News also elaborated on why the final segment was so long and dragged, at times.

“If you can believe it, and this is very telling of the state of WWE creative right now, the idea was to use the long promo to build to the line from Reigns so that fans would chant ‘tater tots’ at Sheamus.”

Before the segment aired, there were already some red flags present about the WWE’s current state of affairs.

Per a report from Wrestlezone, several fans were seen leaving before and during the main event segment with Reigns and Sheamus. A photo in the article shows a litany of empty seats in the arena while the segment was in progress. While the empty seats and droves of fans exiting the live show were a sign of fans becoming restless with the product, the overall viewership of RAW has also taken a drastic hit.

This past week’s RAW generated a weak 2.15 rating, according to UPROXX. It’s the worst rating an episode of RAW has seen since September 1997 and just a notch below the 2.16 rating RAW suffered on the November 23.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, on-air leader of The Authority and top WWE executive Paul “Triple H” Levesque admitted in a conference call that there are some issues the company needs to fix. He says the WWE is trying to fix them, but are still unaware of how to do it.

“We just have to become more disciplined and more creative with how we do things, and how we operate the shows. We’ve had some unfortunate situations with injuries and everything else. It’s on us to be more creative and come up with a better format; a better show. We hear people’s frustrations, and in a lot of ways feel the same way. It’s fixing it, and, trying to fix it. It is what it is. How we fix it, we’re not 100 percent sure yet. But, we will get there. Trust me.”

Levesque also mentioned that RAW being three hours long makes it “extremely difficult” to keep fans interested throughout the show.

“If the thought would be to do it there that night, then you’re just doing a third hour. Then, it’s not NXT, then it’s not different and not a different feel and flavor. Is there a way to do that? Maybe. I think at the end of the day, three hours – no matter how you do it – is extremely difficult. I’ll be the first guy to admit that if I go to a movie and it’s longer than two hours, then I’m looking at my watch, no matter how good it is.”

Fans leaving shows early and television ratings plummeting are just two ways in which the WWE can see there are issues with the current product. And a strong indicator that having the company’s next top babyface compare somebody’s genitalia to a popular and crispy side dish won’t do the trick.

[Images via WWE]