Monday night's episode of RAW took place in Birmingham, England, the birthplace of the late, great Ozzy Osbourne. The singer passed away on July 22 and was mentioned by Women's Intercontinental Champion Becky Lynch during a heated confrontation with Nikki Bella.
"The only good thing that came out of here died a month ago," The Man said in front of the Birmingham crowd. "But in fairness to Ozzy Osbourne, he had the good sense to move to LA, a proper city, because if I lived in Birmingham, I’d die too."
While it was meant to disrespect the city rather than Osbourne, the response has been mixed, and mainstream media outlets have started picking up the story since Ozzy's daughter, Kelly Osbourne, slammed Lynch on Instagram.
Taking to the social media platform, she wrote, "You’re a disrespectful dirtbag. Birmingham wouldn’t pee on you if you were on fire. Birmingham forever. Shame on the WWE for allowing such things to be said about my father and his home."
Opinions are mixed, with some arguing that Kelly has missed the point and doesn't seem to realise that Lynch's comments were scripted. Regardless, it's her father, and he passed away barely a month ago, so the timing for this promo on WWE's part isn't great.
According to Bryan Alvarez on Wrestling Observer Radio, "I was told WWE is embarrassed, and they’re probably gonna do an apology. They may not, but if you look back at how many times WWE has actually apologised for something, it ain’t many. And there’s a discussion about doing a public apology. I know they’ve talked about doing a private apology."
"I don’t even really blame Becky, as I’m sure she didn’t come up with it, but she did it," he continued. "The people don’t want to boo Becky. She really wants to be booed for whatever reason. I guess maybe it’s fun. Probably isn’t fun today."
Lance Storm also chimed in, stating, "Unless you have explicit permission from the family, I think using someone’s passing for cheap heat is bad. It just makes wrestling feel low-brow and cheap when they do stuff like that, and I wish they wouldn’t."
Do you think WWE should apologise for Lynch's comments?