The reaction of an audience is very important for the superstars of World Wrestling Entertainment. If somebody is gone for a while, then they come back after a lot of hype and the reaction is poor then that's a bad sign. See Batista at the 2014 Royal Rumble as an example of that. However, if the reaction is great then it's something we are going to talk about for years to come. A return pop is something that WWE has done a very good job of in the last 15 years or so. In the 1980s and 1990s they really didn't do it that often. They got way better at it in recent years, particularly by using the Royal Rumble as a way to get a big reaction. Those returns are a lot fresher in our minds because of how well they were done. One person's opinion on the biggest pop ever is different from another. Maybe you like a wrestler more than I do so you might rate them higher and that's fine. It's hard to remember every crowd reaction ever, but I feel like what's been put together is a representation of the biggest and loudest pops ever. Here are the rules for this one: It can only be a return. Whether that's from an injury or coming back to WWE after being gone for months at a time or years, it has to be the first time that person came back. For example, Chris Jericho's 1999 debut isn't illegible for this. It did make the Loudest Reactions Ever piece I did earlier in the year, but it doesn't qualify for this one. It also has to be WWE only, so Ric Flair reuniting the Horsemen on Nitro in 1998 wouldn't qualify either. Now that we've got that out of the way, here's a look at 20 of the loudest pops (or crowd reactions) in the history of WWE.
20. Steve Austin, The Rock And Hulk Hogan At WrestleMania 30
This one is obviously pretty recent, but it's very worthy. In Hogan's case, he was already back on WWE TV for a few weeks before this. However, Austin had been gone for years and The Rock was gone for a year, so when they were all in the ring together it was one of those special kind of moments. Only Hogan's appearance was advertised. The other two were a surprise. It was the kind of thing that makes WrestleMania feel special. It was such a cool feeling to be in the crowd that night as we went crazy for Hogan, then it got louder for Austin and Rock too. With all three of them staring at each other it was one of those moments that we're never going to forget.