During Monday night's episode of RAW, United States Champion Matt Riddle appeared in a backstage segment with RAW Women's Champion Asuka. Talking about how popular scooters are in Japan, Riddle forgot his lines, apologised, and walked away as a baffled Asuka looked on in disbelief.
There's been a lot of speculation since about whether it was a real moment or some sort of weird in-joke, but on Wrestling Observer Live, Bryan Alvarez confirmed that it was a legit botch.
"The story I was told was he wasn’t told it was live but [Bruce] Prichard and Vince [McMahon] saw it and they just laughed and laughed and laughed. So, if it was live you can’t redo it," he attempts to explain. "So I’m wondering if what actually happened was a pretape that he screwed up but they loved the pretape so much - the point is what you saw on TV was not a plan. He was supposed to deliver his line. He had some line about the scooters in Japan. He screwed up, they howled and they thought we got to put this on TV."
"Nevermind the fact that it makes your promotion look like World Championship Wrestling," Alvarez continued. "It’s all about entertaining themselves. It entertained Bruce, it entertained Vince and so it went on television. That’s the story on Riddle and forgetting his line. He actually forgot his line and they thought it was funny."
So, there you have it. McMahon was seemingly ribbing Riddle and decided to put the botch on TV because he found it funny (even though it makes everyone involved look pretty foolish). As we've known for a while, though, much of what plays out on RAW and SmackDown is meant for an audience of one: Vince.
Check out the weird backstage segment with Riddle and Asuka below: