10 Awful Things Wrestling Needs To LEAVE In 2023
7. Piped-In Crowd Noise
Everybody has their own interpretation of how fake is too fake in wrestling, which assists in making it - at times - the most tedious, repetitive and exhausting thing on the planet to talk about.
For some, the repeated use of a thrust kick ruins the sense of immersion. Why, a wrestler must be as soft as hell if they can't kick somebody in the head and keep them down!
A lot of those same people miss the days of the working punch, which is virtually the exact same thing.
There's no such thing as too fake in a form that has never once felt realistic. The joy is in the creative expression to do almost anything and generate a booming response. If people believe in the make-believe and enjoy or love to hate it, that's wrestling.
That's "people" actually present in the arena, not an uncanny recording of how people once reacted to something else.
The piped-in noise needs to go. The counter-argument is that pressing the boo button for Dominik Mysterio eventually conditioned the fans into a real reaction, but it's just...terrible. It sounds so obnoxiously fake that it's almost too insulting to the intelligence.
The core magic of wrestling, no matter which era or style one prefers, is in its ability to make fans react - lose that, and it actually does become something else entirely.