Professional wrestling relies heavily on refereeing, and different promotions use them in different ways. While AEW normally enables their officials to display more personality, WWE wants their officials to be more in the background. Yet, it doesn’t always come over nicely.
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Bully Ray has many complaints about the refereeing in general throughout Tony Khan’s promotion on “Busted Open Radio,”
“I’m bringing to light the refereeing issues in AEW which continue to happen week after week for no good reason other than complete, utter, and sheer ignorance or laziness,” Bully Ray declared. “And that’s all I can chalk it up to.”
He drew attention to a problem he saw during Orange Cassidy and Jay Lethal’s bout on Wednesday’s “AEW Dynamite,” pointing out a time when both wrestlers were outside the ring and the referee wasn’t even starting a 10 count. The referee then made the choice to run to the outside but did nothing further.
Bully continued
“The refereeing s*** just bothers me to high heaven and I think it needs to stop,” he continued. “To me, the referee is as important as the competitors. They’re part of the story of the match.” Whether it’s very obviously holding a ladder, putting their hands in their pockets for seemingly no reason, or not counting when both participants are outside the ring, it’s starting to gnaw at the Hall of Famer more.
“Did the guys have a really good match? Yes they did, but it’s moments like that, that just, I’m sorry … it should never happen.”
It should be noted there is a slight irony to Bully Ray complaining about refereeing when he is frequently eliminated from matches because he can’t seem to follow the rules himself.
