This past Friday night on WWE SmackDown, Bobby Lashley, with The Street Profits in his corner, picked up a victory over Karrion Kross. The win advances Lashley in the ongoing WWE United States Championship Tournament to decide Logan Paul’s next challenger. Following the match, the WWE on FOX X account published a social media post that garnered attention: “DEM BOYZ!”
To many fans, the team they think of when they hear “DEM BOYZ” is not Lashley and The Profits but rather multi-time ROH Tag Team Champions, The Briscoes. Tragically, Jay Briscoe lost his life in January of this year when he was involved in a fatal car crash just shy of his 39th birthday. Jay’s brother, Mark, saw the post from the WWE on FOX account and let fans know how he felt about it.
“For real?? This shit is hilarious,” he wrote on X. “@TripleH, whoever runs this twitter should probably be fired for lack of knowledge. Or they need the taste slapped out of their mouth for lack of reverence.”
Following his comment on the WWE on FOX post, Mark was inundated by several responses from those on the platform. Some fans were respectful of Mark’s feelings, considering he is still grieving the loss of his older brother, which happened less than a year ago. Others were less kind and used the opportunity to throw negative comments his way, especially at his ask that someone lose their job.
“Oh yeah, that’s why I quit posting on Twitter lol,” Mark wrote in a follow-up post. “Just logged back on… Wow. Some of y’all are wild lol. I just miss my brother, that’s all, and I got a little in my feelings when I seen the Fox post. @tripleh, you ain’t gotta fire nobody, times is tough. Love y’all..take it light people #DemBoysForever.”
Mark was not the only former and current Ring of Honor star to speak out against the WWE on FOX post. Maria Kanellis-Bennett tweeted her thoughts before deleting her initial statement and posting the following.
“So disrespectful and tone deaf,” she wrote. “These are the only Dem Boyz. I said what I said and shouldn’t have deleted it. The magic is in the friendships, the memories, and the people you help. The Briscoes have helped and elevated everyone around them.”
Kanellis-Bennett, too, was met with a firestorm of comments on the platform and then posted a message noting she would be keeping her Instagram but leaving X. As of the writing of this post, Kanellis-Bennett has reactivated her X account.
It is worth noting that Kanellis-Bennett shared a cryptic message on X before her posts about The Briscoes, which has been deleted, and many have interpreted it as a shot at CM Punk’s Raw return promo. Before marrying Mike Bennett, she was in a relationship with Punk years before. Passionate Punk fans had no issues piling on during the ‘Dem Boyz’ ordeal.
“Seen a promo recently that was so incredibly contrived and scripted it made me question a lot of things I thought were true,” she began. “Or maybe they used to be true and at a certain point the grift and honesty gets washed off by money and politics. Maybe it isn’t possible to be successful and authentic. Maybe it’s nuanced and impossible to predict. But, I’m still in the struggle so I can’t understand the change. How can you forget what the fight was? Or the people that fought beside you? When you are still struggling to pay the bills the motivation is very real. The words are real. #almost20years.”