Unfortunately, botches happen in wrestling, and while the majority are quickly forgotten, one that occurs during the main event of WrestleMania is going to live on forever. This is certainly the case with the main event of WrestleMania 35 when the finish saw Becky Lynch counter Ronda Rousey’s Piper’s Pit into a crucifix roll-up and win the match. The issue was that it was plainly evident that Rousey’s shoulder was up during the pinfall. At the time, some fans speculated it was done on purpose to set up an eventual rematch, but it was later verified to have been a botched finish.
Now while speaking on his podcast, former WWE referee Mike Chidoa revealed that both Vince McMahon and John Laurinaitis were furious at how the finish went down. Apparently, there was so much heat that there were concerns that referee Rod Zapata would be fired for incorrectly counting the pin.
Rod Zapata was the referee for that match and got a lot of heat for it, a lot of heat for that match for counting. He shouldn’t have counted. I think he panicked. He could have said, “Hey, get that shoulder down more. Get that shoulder down.” Sometimes if you start a count and it’s almost not touching, and if you’re telling them as you’re counting, they can make the adjustment and get it tighter. He should have never counted, he got a lot of heat for that. I remember there was so much heat that you almost thought he was going to lose his job at that point.
That was something that you just have to work on as a referee. If you don’t see something down, you can’t count it the way the camera angles are. Vince was f*cking hot. Laurinaitis was hot, rightfully so.
In WWE, referees are taught to treat a match like a shoot, and even if it goes against the finish, they are to call the match correctly. Having trained at WWE’s former developmental territory FCW and debuting on Raw in 2010, he certainly had a lot of experience and was fully aware of this policy. Thankfully for Zapata, he wouldn’t end up losing his job and is still employed by WWE. However, it is believed he received a significant fine at the time.
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