Second verse, same as the first verse. Not even two months after the WWE got in a bit of hot water for monkeying around with the United States flag, we find ourselves in a similar position with the flag of Russia. I didn’t expect to become WithSpandex’s Senior Flag Controversy Correspondent, but here we are. In case you missed it on Monday Night Raw, Rusev and Lana deployed their customary Russian flag backdrop to punctuate another sermon on Fearless And Handsome Leader Vladimir Putin. The Big Show (clearly being the good guy here) decided to make like Gorbachev and tear stuff down. Unsurprisingly, this led to the following statement on WWE.com yesterday:
We at WWE would like to apologize to the Russian people for the incident on Monday Night Raw that could have been construed as disrespect for their nation’s flag.
When asked for comment, my one friend who speaks Russian declined to say anything because she’s doing more important things, i.e. LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE. But yeah, this is about as much of a non-controversy as the whole SummerSlam thing. Much like the stars and stripes, the Russian flag isn’t really supposed to hit the ground, but accidents will happen. Sometimes the accident is stupid writing, but that’s beside the point. How many Russians even saw enough of this to get offended in the first place? A quick Google search reveals that Raw airs at midnight on Sundays in Russia, and those hardly seem like peak hours. Lana says on Twitter that the WWE Network is available there, that’s probably the more accessible source. In any case, I’m just going to start a death pool for the next international flag to hit the dirt on WWE programming.
