Triple H Explains Why Charlotte Lost in her Raw Debut

Triple H gave the media an answer to the question of why Charlotte lost her Raw debut this past Monday night.

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This past Monday night on Raw, we saw the main roster debut of NXT Women’s Champion Charlotte. It was assumed that she’d beat a jobber Diva and look strong going into NXT TakeOver: R Evolution, which will take place tomorrow night at 8 pm ET on the WWE Network.

Instead, we saw Charlotte lose to Natalya on a cheap, roll-up pin. There couldn’t have been much more of a baffling booking decision to use in her main roster debut than that.

Triple H, the man behind NXT, held a conference call with the media today for R Evolution. He immediately got the question fired at him of why the Nature Girl lost in her debut. Here’s the transcript of the answer, via Cageside Seats.

"“One of the difficult things about live programming is it’s live and times are crunched, times are tweaked. Having been in a million different things going on that night, I can’t speak to the exact amount of time that they were given or had. But the show is in flux, it’s live. I’m sure they were, just having seen what happened that night, I know they were given more time than that but by the time they get there things go over, things get crunched, we’re trying to… you know, we have a lot of responsibilities to make within that show of commercials, and it’s not just… we can’t just throw things on the air and they are what they are. Would we have preferred to give them more time? Hell, I would have loved to have given them the time I gave them at the NXT special and be able to showcase what they do.“As far as the decision of who went over, Nattie or Charlotte or anything like that, those decisions are heavily debated and made. It is what it is. At the end of the day, for me, it’s about promotion. When you look at what they have done in NXT and every place else, the amount of people that see them there compared to the amount of people that will see them on Monday Night Raw with the whole world watching… the difference is mind boggling. Just for them to be exposed in that way is massive. It isn’t just to give Charlotte… a lot of people were like ‘oh, it’s her debut’ and all those things. Well, it was, in some way, but it’s not like she’s going to be on there again next week and by the time she is back on Raw and ready to be competing on Raw on a regular basis and performing on Raw, you’ll see a different Charlotte and you’ll see her presented in a different way. It was really just exposure. As far as what the outcome was, that could be debated. But it is what it is. … You can go back and pick apart bits and pieces of it all but when you overall look at it in the big plan six months from now, a year from now, two years from now, whenever it is, no one is going to be like ‘yeah, but they killed her on her debut.’ The bigger picture is involved.”"

So essentially, we’re supposed to forget that this is how Charlotte’s debut went; it sounds similar to how they made Baron Corbin’s “debut” at NXT TakeOver: Fatal 4-Way. He had sparingly jobbed to opponents for a couple of months before having his “official debut,” in which we were supposed to forget about anything that had happened with him before.

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It still doesn’t make sense why they wouldn’t want Charlotte looking strong going into the live special tomorrow. There’s a large assumption among many that Sasha Banks will be taking the reigns of the Divas division in NXT anyway, so why wouldn’t WWE want to make people think otherwise? Unless Charlotte may still hold onto the title once the show concludes.

It will be interesting to watch tomorrow night, so stay tuned!

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