As PWMania.com previously reported, Nikki ASH defeated Tamina on the September 13th 2021 edition of WWE RAW. However, the finish was botched and a video clip quickly went viral on social media.
It appears that the referee apologized backstage for the finish being botched. Dave Meltzer of F4WOnline.com discussed the matter during Wrestling Observer Radio:
“The Tamina match, Tamina was supposed to win that match. That’s why the ring announcer said, ‘The winner, Tamina’. If you watch when the match ended, it was Tamina’s music that played, not Nikki’s music, and the ring announcer got the wrong call. What happened was, the ref botched the call. You remember, Tamina kicked out. She kicked out, the ref did not see her kick out and called it as a shoot…she totally kicked out. The ref backstage just said, ‘I didn’t see it,’ and was apologetic and everything like that, but it was the ref’s fault. He did blow the call.”
“How the ring announcer messed up is really an indictment of the ring announcer because it shows he was not watching at all. He knew what he was supposed to say, but the TV announcers, (Corey) Graves, Jimmy Smith, and Byron (Saxton), they knew enough to not say Tamina had just won. The ring announcer did not, he was clearly not paying attention and that was bad.”
