Following an entertaining triple threat title match on Friday night, the finish to this week’s edition of WWE SmackDown saw a major miscommunication between the wrestlers and referee that created an embarrassing moment. However, a recent interview with one of the company’s top officials suggests that the blame for the botch falls on Nia Jax.
In the main event of this week’s SmackDown, WWE Women’s Champion Tiffany Stratton successfully defended her title against Nia Jax and Jade Cargill. Late in the match, Cargill got busted open after a spot where she was thrown into the ringside stairs. That moment seemed to set off a chain of events that led to confusion at the end of the match.
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After Cargill had her wound attended to by the referee and returned to the ring, she hit a move on Jax and went for the pin. That attempt to win the match was broken up by a basement dropkick from Stratton and then her own pin attempt. It was a move that wouldn’t end most matches, but Jax seemed to think it was supposed to and didn’t kick out at three.
The ref, Daphanie LaShaun, was obviously under the impression that it was not supposed to be the end of the bout, and avoided making the three-count. It was an obvious moment with some bad communication by all involved, or someone made a big mistake. Stratton would go on to hit her finishing move to win the match.
During a recent interview with Chris VanVliet, legendary WWE referee Charles Robinson was, oddly enough, asked about such moments, and he explained why the blame for those sorts of miscues is on the wrestlers, not the referee.
“Sometimes, guys forget [to kick out]. In our defense, because people say, ‘If they don’t kick out, don’t count three.’ Well, if you know that’s not the finish, guess what, mentally, you’re going to swipe. It’s not a shoot,” he said. “So it makes it much more difficult to do that.
“We’ll try to fix it some other way, but it’s either we are going to count all the time and you just kick out or not, which would end a lot of matches quickly, or when they don’t kick out, we just try to fix it somehow.”
Robinson also mentioned it’s not up to the referees to make the count close. It’s on the performer to kick out close to the three. Furthermore, he said referees call out the numbers each time they start the count, and that he often yells kickout before the three.
During last night’s broadcast, it seems like LaShaunn was calling out as she made the pin. Robinson’s comments seem to point to Nia Jax being the culprit in Friday’s main event miscue.
