Monday's Raw - the final episode of the show before WrestleMania 32 - aired live from Brooklyn's Barclays Center, and as a Queens resident (and begrudging WWE fan), it was my sworn duty to attend the broadcast, no matter how bad it would be. Fans who follow WWE's weakly - oops, I mean weekly - programming have seen how this year's road to WrestleMania has been one of the most disappointing in company history, but surely the last Raw (one airing from WWE's New York backyard, no less) would deliver the goods. In the end, a Raw that should have been a grand slam was a single at best, maybe a hit-by-pitch. Thankfully for WWE, it doesn't even matter. The company has concocted a business model where Pay-Per-View buys aren't a factor, and so there are no immediate consequences to their bad management. Outside of stock numbers, the only important metric is network subscriptions, and with the Free WrestleMania campaign (and people's inexplicable interest in Shane McMahon) in full force, those are guaranteed to skyrocket. WrestleMania 32 will be a success, even if half of the audience falls asleep during the main event. Just because WWE doesn't take WrestleMania seriously, though, doesn't mean that we hardcore fans don't. Let's break the broadcast down and look at what we learned heading into the show of shows. Here are ten things I noticed attending Raw live...
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013
