WWE issues statement on Lana promo at Battleground 2014

During last night's (July 20, 2014) WWE Battleground pay-per-view (PPV) at the Tampa Bay Times Forum in Tampa, Florida, Lana cut a promo that seemed to indirectly reference the recent Malaysia Airlines tragedy when she shamed the American crowd for blaming Russia for "recent current world events".

Not even 12 hours later, and WWE was taking major heat for these remarks from the U.S. media.

In response, the company has released a statement:

"Last night's segment during WWE's Battleground event was in no way referring to the Malaysia Airlines tragedy. The storyline with characters Rusev and Lana has been a part of WWE programming for more than 3 months. WWE apologizes to anyone who misunderstood last night's segment and was offended."

Our friend Iain Kidd nailed this one:

@cagesideseats WWE will be loving it. They didn't reference any specific incident, but they have everyone talking. Perfect situation.

— Iain Kidd (@iainkidd) July 21, 2014

A simple "hey, we're sorry, but that's totally not what we were talking about" should work just fine, even if that is, in fact, exactly what they were talking about. Because there's no way to prove it was, there isn't much else anyone can say on the matter.

Complete Battleground results and recap can be found here.