Why Paige’s promo on Raw crossed the line

Paige cut a promo on Charlotte to close last night’s episode of Raw, and it crossed a few boundaries.

Last night on Monday Night Raw, Charlotte and Paige closed out the show with a contract signing that surprised some. This was done to promote their WWE Divas Championship match at WWE Survivor Series this Sunday.

The beginning of the segment featured Charlotte and Paige talking about the latter’s heel turn, the quest for the championship and other fairly benign trash talk. However, as things progressed a talking point about Charlotte’s late brother, Reid, was brought up. Reid passed away from a drug overdose in 2013.

During the promo Charlotte became emotional when talking about her brother’s passing. She said Paige was there for her during that rough time. Charlotte then said she is here today because Reid.

Later in the promo, the Divas continued to go back and forth until Paige said the following: “Your little baby brother didn’t have much fight in him, did he?”

This drew a very mixed response online because of the boundaries that the line pushed. It was harsh and a bit surprising given WWE’s devotion to PG programming. Overall, it was plain uncomfortable.

This segment between Paige and Charlotte was passionate and fiery, but Paige’s line about Reid did not go over well. It was likely run by Charlotte and Ric Flair before being used, because if unscripted it wouldn’t have gone over well backstage.

There is a crowd to feed, though, that is made up of about 10,000 in the audience and a few million at home. Plenty of them are children within the age of 4-12 that may have no idea what Paige was referencing. What’s going to happen when someone’s son or daughter goes to their parent and asks “What did Paige mean about Charlotte’s brother not having much fight? What happened to him?” How do you explain drug references to young kids watching the show? The same goes for those in the crowd. It’s one of many details at which WWE has a tendency to swing and miss.

If Raw was back to TV-14 programming, maybe this wouldn’t have gone over as badly. The show being geared towards an older audience likely means viewers would better understand a drug abuse reference. Doing it on PG TV made little sense.

One thing to give this segment credit on is the ending. Charlotte swinging Paige around the ring and into the barricade played off her aggression very well.

To show off Charlotte’s aggression, Paige could have started insulting Becky Lynch, who was not brought up once during the segment. She had called Becky all different names throughout this PCB breakup and it riled up Charlotte. Maybe something teasing Becky turning on Charlotte to join Paige could have been brought up here too. There have never been any hints of it on TV, but Becky isn’t going anywhere on the main roster, so giving a tease of giving her something to do would have been great.

Then at Survivor Series, Becky could cost Charlotte the match or cause a disqualification and align herself with Paige. Similar to what they did with her and Sasha Banks in WWE NXT, Becky could form an alliance with Paige, win the Divas Championship, and they could set up a feud where Becky gets over as a babyface down the line. She should have been booked hot when she first came up, but this would be a way of WWE making up for it. This scenario is unlikely but it would have been better than the lines that were crossed during Raw.

This promo from Raw will definitely get people talking. Some will say it was fine to do while others will have a problem with it. Ultimately, for PG programming the segment could have been played off in other ways in order to sell this match going into Survivor Series on Sunday, Nov. 22.