WWE didn’t waste much time making the Trick Williams merch controversy disappear. Shortly after fans started dragging the new “Lemon Pepper Steppers” shirt over what they saw as racially tone-deaf imagery, WWE pulled the shirt from WWE Shop.
The design featured Williams’ white boot surrounded by fried chicken wings, turning his “Lemon Pepper Steppers” catchphrase into a literal visual. The joke was easy enough to understand, but once the shirt hit social media, the reaction went south fast.
A lot of fans weren’t just calling the shirt ugly either. The real heat came from people pointing out the obvious racial baggage attached to putting fried chicken imagery on merchandise for a Black WWE Superstar.
That’s what turned this from another bad wrestling shirt into a full-blown controversy. Fans started questioning how the design made it through WWE’s approval process in the first place, especially considering how quickly the racial stereotype angle jumped out once the shirt started circulating online.
Then, not long after the backlash picked up steam, the shirt was gone. WWE quietly removed the “Lemon Pepper Steppers” shirt from WWE Shop, ending what turned out to be an extremely short run for the merchandise. The company has not publicly explained why it was pulled, but the timing speaks for itself.
The whole situation moved fast. WWE put the shirt up, fans started calling it racially tone-deaf, the criticism spread across wrestling Twitter, and then the merch vanished from the store.
Whatever WWE was going for with the design, it clearly didn’t land the way they wanted. The shirt was supposed to turn Trick Williams’ catchphrase into a visual gag, but instead it ended up becoming the exact kind of merch controversy WWE probably wanted off its hands as quickly as possible. Now the bigger question is how the shirt ever got approved to begin with.
What do you think about WWE pulling Trick Williams’ “Lemon Pepper Steppers” shirt after the backlash? Should somebody have caught the problem before it ever went on sale? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
