Backstage Details On Travel Issues For Talent, Major Rewrites To WWE Raw

Last Monday on the "Raw" after WrestleMania, WWE Chairman Vince McMahon was reported "firmly" back in control, leading to a frantic show with multiple off-screen rewrites as well as a dip in overall morale backstage. Well, tonight's "Raw" from the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, Washington also features a lot of shuffling around, but for an entirely different reason this time. Corey Graves mentioned on commentary at the top of the show that a lot of talent had been dealing with travel delays and thus, hadn't arrived at the arena yet. Fightful's Sean Ross Sapp reported as much about an hour before "Raw" began.

"We're told Vince McMahon isn't at Raw today but there were a lot of travel issues this morning that caused a lot of changes to the show," Sapp tweeted.

The Wrestling Observer's Andrew Zarian and Dave Meltzer added their own reporting, with Zarian writing, "50% of the raw roster has still not arrived to Seattle, due to travel issues, and there have been major re-writes for Monday night raw this evening" and Meltzer echoing similar, tweeting, "...a large percentage of the roster wasn't there, some weren't going to make it and others were getting in late so a lot of changes and backup plans were put in place in recent hours."

A report early Monday evening confirmed that McMahon was not in Seattle for "Raw," but his overall involvement in the show was still unknown. It was said that he remains involved, but remotely, which is similar to how last Friday's "SmackDown" ran as McMahon was not present in Portland, Oregon either. Even still, his physical absence in general is said to have had an overall positive effect on those who were backstage.