Vince McMahon admits injuries and absence of Roman Reigns have hurt WWE

Vince McMahon has elaborated on the impact losing several top WWE stars to injury has had on the business

WWE chairman Vince McMahon has admitted that the company has suffered with injuries and absences to top stars in the past year.

McMahon made the comments as part of the company's presentation of their financial figures for 2018, a year in which they took the most revenue in their history.

WWE added revenue from their pay-per-view events in Saudi Arabia and Australia but attendances for house shows - non-televised live events - was down, especially in their North American market.

Raw and SmackDown have also seen a decline in television ratings in the United States and McMahon feels the loss of some of WWE's top performers has played a part.

"The unfortunate aspect of sometimes in our business, is that our performers are not cartoons. They get hurt. This year, leading up to where we are now, we've had an inordinate number of injuries," said McMahon.

Roman Reigns has been off WWE television since October as he is being treated for leukaemia

"And when you have injuries, there's a whole bunch of them. Roman Reigns being the principle among them.

"In addition to that, we've had injuries to Sasha Banks, Becky Lynch, who is one of our top female performers, was injured. Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Bray Wyatt, Charlotte Flair, Alexa Bliss, Braun Strowman, Dean Ambrose, Ember Moon, Samoa Joe, Akam (from AOP), Jason Jordan, Fandango, Big Show, Seth Rollins. It's like we had all these injuries, which is really unusual for us, and they're characters.

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"It's no different if you're writing a soap opera and all of a sudden your main character wasn't there. You're in the middle of production, what do you do? You very nimbly change the storyline, but it's not as good as the original one.

"Sometimes it is better because we're pretty good at it, but those are things that we're faced with, and one of the reasons why television ratings have dropped. And one of the reasons, obviously, from a live event standpoint, that's dropped too. Because if you don't have your favourites on television, obviously you can't see them at a live event either."