WWE Receives Criticism For Insensitive Promo Following Roman Reigns Leukemia Announcement

WWE’s Raw show started off this week with Roman Reigns making the hardest announcement of his career. At 33-years-old, the leukemia that he thought was gone after 11 years has come back and he had to lay down the Universal Title he worked so hard for and walk away from WWE to take care of himself.
This announcement not only brought a 6% increase to Raw’s ratings, but they also replayed the segment several times throughout the night — but they might not have considered what was bookending each replay of Reigns’ sad announcement.
Right after they replayed the announcement during the show, the screen cut to a tombstone with Triple H and Shawn Micheal’s name on it. The promo that followed was The Undertaker hyping their match at Crown Jewel. While this was certainly pretaped and Taker had no idea the promo would be aired in this spot — it was still noticed by several fans as being rather distasteful.
As Reigns starts a fight for his life, the ominous image of a tombstone followed and brought some fans to livid status. Bryan Alvarez has even come down on WWE’s decision during Wrestling Observer Live as being not the best move to tell that story.
Later on, DX has a moment in the ring where the lights turned blue and a gong hit. This could have been all they needed to hype the match — after all, we’re talking about The Undertaker so not much hype is really needed. Only time will tell if they will be more careful in the future, but WWE might have dropped the ball on that one.