During last night's SmackDown, Pat McAfee cut another scathing promo, once again tearing into the current WWE product. He also fired some shots straight back at CM Punk, who declared him "Pat MAGAFee" on RAW this past Monday.
Before the show, the former commentator had promised a "massive surprise" for fans, and that was the news that WrestleMania 42 Saturday tickets are 25% between now and Monday. He buried the Sunday card—not a great way to build interest—and was eventually confronted by Cody Rhodes.
If the point of this storyline has been to get fans back on the side of the American Nightmare, then it's worked. However, with Jelly Roll now also in the mix, it still feels like the whole thing has gone off the rails as WWE looks to increase interest in WrestleMania by...annoying fans?
It feels more like a Vince McMahon storyline than a Triple H one, and only time will tell whether this pays off or is as damaging to the product as Baron Corbin's stint as an authority figure was in the late 2010s.
One person within the company who isn't impressed by the storyline is current WWE Tag Team Champion Damian Priest. In what we're assuming was a shoot interview, he said, "It sucks. Not a fan. As somebody who knows Pat and gets along with him, but for me, that’s not my taste. I don’t think it helps anything. He didn’t need it."
"So for me, and I’m sure a lot of people aren’t gonna be happy that I said that, but in the locker room specifically, a lot of us weren’t happy, and that’s real. I was asked by some of the younger talent what I thought, and I thought it was bull. We’re a PG show, right? But he could come in, and he could throw F-bombs and say whatever he wants."
"For me, that’s like one of those things that so many other talents, even from one word, could benefit and it’s like, 'Wow, now they’re up here,'" Priest continued. "Instead, you take somebody who’s not even here all the time and gets away with saying something like that, who doesn’t even need it. Not gonna lie, it kinda pissed me off."
You can hear more from the former Judgement Day member in the X post below.