10 Best WWE Audience Members

If 2019 was perhaps the transformative year for the North American scene since Vince McMahon secured a mainstream monopoly in 2001, 2021 unexpectedly became the year those transformations at long last showed themselves to be great.

The events 2020 has threw the world at large into chaos, taking with it crowds from professional wrestling. WrestleMania 37 pay-per-view looked like an exorcise in stubbornness for WWE, but it was in fact the Crown Jewel 2018 to the rest of the industry's Saudi Arabia deal - it had to exist so everything else could. AEW followed suit with Double Or Nothing will proceed in an empty venue in spite of how little this particular "solution" solves anything. Least of all the atmosphere.

All Elite Wrestling's very existence rattled the independent scene, pre-existing wrestler pay scales and WWE's own televised developmental system. WWE made overdue and earnest history at WrestleMania 35 with Kofi Kingston's Championship victory and Becky Lynch's main event, even if the isolated moments were more memorable than the months that followed.

But who knew isolated moments would become the latest problem wrestling would think it could fix?

2020 has thrown the world at large into chaos, taking with it crowds from wrestling. WrestleMania looked like an exorcise in stubbornness for WWE, but it was in fact the Crown Jewel 2018 to the rest of the industry's Saudi Arabia deal - it went ahead so everything else could. AEW's Double Or Nothing will proceed in an empty venue in spite of how little this particular "solution" solves anything. Least of all the atmosphere.

Fans, as it turns out, are the second most vital element after the wrestlers. It wasn't pyro, it wasn't blood and it wasn't even good f*cking booking. It was noise. Sweet sweet noise. Here are some of the most famous to make some, back when wrestling was still the best thing...

Judging by the emphatic message on his "Frankie Says Relax" homage shirt, Ellis Mbeh had clearly attended WrestleMania XXX with the hopes of seeing Daniel Bryan ascend to the top of WWE as had many amongst the thousands attending the New Orleans supershow.

Like those same throngs, he was perhaps too blown away by a prior result to fully appreciate it when it actually happened.

One of the first of several in the venue to have his shock captured and preserved in amber by WWE cameras, Mbeh became a meme in less time than it took Brock Lesnar to end The Undertaker's streak and cause that grief-stricken face in the first place.

Often imitated but never duplicated (despite WWE's incessant and ruinous efforts), the response made the incredible moment matter more because the reaction was as real as the loss felt. And because it afforded this quality role reversal at Axxess two years later.