This past Sunday WWE’s Pay Per View Extreme Rules was held in Pittsburgh, PA. The stadium was packed to the brim with fans. When watching a WWE event, especially one as big as Extreme Rules, fans expect to see an energized and rowdy crowd… they do not expect a disrespectful one which is what they got in Pittsburgh. The next night, Monday night RAW took place in Buffalo, NY. Fans started pleading on Twitter to the Buffalo crowd begging them to be better than the Pittsburgh crowd was. What can be said for the Buffalo crowd is this, at least they weren’t disrespectful, they were the opposite. The Buffalo crowd was barely energized, leaving fans once again to question, what is going on with the crowds recently at WWE’s live events?
Burn It Down Versus Count It Down?
The biggest upset during Extreme Rules, in terms of the crown mentality, was when it was time for the main event: Dolph Ziggler vs. Seth Rollins in a 30- minute Iron Man match. Fans had been debating for the whole week whether this was going to be the main event, some even going so far as to beg WWE to let it be the main event. Those fans got their wish, which would lead viewers to believe this would be the most intense, energized, rowdy moment for the crowd. The countdown clock was thrown onto the screen, it started counting down, with both Ziggler and Rollins starting up the match. This is where the crowd was the most disrespectful all night. When it was the final ten seconds to every minute, the crowd started counting down. The fans in the arena at this point were not even watching the match, they were watching the clock instead. Besides being disrespectful to the talent by not even watching their match, this also had to get inside the talents heads. Both Ziggler and Rollins know the match is 30 minutes long, they can see the clock, they don’t need an arena full of human stopwatches to remind them.
When My Hand Goes Up, Your Mouth Goes Shut?
When it came to Monday night RAW in Buffalo, the fans were respectful, almost too respectful. There was barely any cheering, no name calling, minus Kurt Angle’s you suck chant when he came out, and there was a severe lack of enthusiasm. It wasn’t as if the matches the were taking place in front of them were bad either. On the contrary, Monday night’s RAW was one of the best that WWE has put out in a while. The only time the crowd really got wild was when Seth Rollins made his entrance and even that was only an 8-8.5 on the crowd scale. Even when Ronda Rousey made her surprise entrance, even though she has been suspended, the fans in the stands reacted but not in the way viewers would expect them to. It was almost as if someone was standing by with cue cards telling the fans how they were supposed to be reacting. By the time RAW was over, viewers could almost guarantee that the fans at home were cheering harder than those in the arena in Buffalo.
What Has Changed?
It’s hard to say what has changed in the mentality of the crowd at the WWE shows. Some fans have speculated that devoted fans are no longer going to the events, that they are being bought out by those who have more money than themselves. This could be a possibility that seems more and more likely these days with all the third-party sellers. Some fans speculate that maybe wrestling is dying out and people are longer as interested in the sport. That could not be further from the truth. Maybe it’s a creative reason, maybe the story lines are not grabbing fans like they used to. At the end of the day, why this is happening is not what is important. What is important is this, these men and women are giving their all day in and day out, they have made their lives this sport because they love it and they want to perform. They deserve respect, they deserved to be cheered on, they deserve to feel the love from their fans. As fans, we all should never forget that and remember that those athletes in the ring are doing what they do for the same reason that we watch them do it, for the love of wrestling.
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