Wrestling crowds are slowly returning to shows after being away due to obvious reasons in the last year. On wrestling Twitter, a “fun” place, there was the debate over the return of wrestling crowds being a negative thing. That take is far from true.
One thing that the pandemic proved was how important crowds really are to pro-wrestling in a lot of ways. Wrestling fans are the heart and soul of the wrestling business and that can’t be denied or debated. It’s ture that there will always be some idiotic fans like the one we saw jump the barricade on last week’s episode of Dynamite. There’s also something to be said about the hygiene about some fans, but that’s not here or there.
The argument about The ThunderDome being better than having crowds on shows needs to stop, it’s not debatable. Fans are always going to be better. The ThunderDome felt fake and every reaction was unnatural ,if you think about it, every babyface was as over as Steve Austin in his peak and heels were booed in the ThunderDome like crowds did to Vince McMahon in the Attitude Era. All those “reactions” in the ThunderDome were fake and didn’t help one bit. I will say, the ThunderDome was a necessary evil due to circumstances, but The ThunderDome was nowhere near as close or enjoyable as having fans on the arena.
Wrestling crowds when they are not presented with something worth paying a ticket, they will let you know all about it with CM Punk Chants and WWE has deserved them for the type of content they sometimes present to attending fans and those watching on TV.
Wrestling crowds enhance everything. YouTube shows like Dark and Elevation have improves tremendously with having crowds in them. ROH in their Best In The World Show was so good and wrestling fans being back was a huge factor. If WWE wants crowds to be happy and not hijack the show, they should probably present crowds something worth paying a ticket. It’s crazy concept, but it might work.
It will be interesting how WWE in particular will be with crowds returning. WrestleMania this year was a success and a very good show (especially night 1), but Vince McMahon always wanted the ability of controlling the crowd reactions and the ThunderDome gave him that power, but I would not be surprised if he’s thinking of finding a way to keep that and adapting it to shows with crowds.
