In Better Taste: Jay Briscoe's Death Caused NXT To Change A Planned Segment

That wouldn’t have worked. The wrestling world was rocked this week by the shocking death of Jay Briscoe at age 38 in a car accident. The news broke on Tuesday and since then, all kinds of tributes and memories have been posted online by wrestlers and wrestling fans. Thankfully something like this does not happen often, but it turns out that it caused a big change to a wrestling show as well.

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According to Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com, Briscoe’s death caused a planned segment on this week’s NXT to be changed. The original plans called for Pretty Deadly to hold a funeral for New Day, but the news of Briscoe’s passing caused New Day and WWE executive Shawn Michaels to scrap the idea. In addition, Michaels made the call for commentator Vic Joseph to mention Briscoe during the broadcast.

There was a planned NXT segment tonight where New Day would hold a "funeral" for Pretty Deadly's title shot. When word of Jay Briscoe's passing emerged, New Day and Shawn Michaels nixed the segment, and Michaels added the Vic Joseph tribute of Briscoe to the show.

— Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com (@SeanRossSapp) January 18, 2023

That was for the better. Check out the two teams doing something a bit more conventional:

Opinion: They didn’t have much of another choice with this one as running a funeral segment on the day a wrestling star passed away would have been some of the most horrible taste imaginable. Thankfully that isn’t where things went and NXT had enough common sense to know that. It’s also nice to see WWE acknowledging Briscoe’s death, which is a new trend in the new WWE regime.