10 Impulse Reactions To The First EVER Empty Arena WWE Raw
The first EVER flagship held behind closed doors - and in the shadow of historic WrestleMania news.
Friday's SmackDown was a hoot.
Triple H opened the show with the same verve "nnnDadddd" always would whenever something outside of company control had occurred and resulted in them scrambling to get a show out at all costs. They're the billion dollar Little Engine That Could, see, and this was going to be the billion dollar show that must go on.
The Performance Center looked beautiful bathed in blue spotlight and the SmackDown set dressing. The wrestlers featured had their own unique ways of dealing with the strange circumstances they had put upon them, and the anticipation for a strange old Monday Night Raw featuring Steve Austin, The Undertaker and Edge ramped back up.
Then, the overdue bombshell.
Approximately an hour before showtime, WWE released confirmation that WrestleMania - WrestleMania - would take place in the very same empty gym instead of Tampa Bay's Raymond James Stadium. News would break throughout the evening about other changes to the weekend schedule as the fanbase at large adjusted to the blockbuster news.
There was, naturally, quite the buzz generated as a result. Did it impose itself upon the silence behind Monday's predeterimed violence?
10. A No-Sell That Will Go Down In History
Like a perfectly planned Kickoff Show, WWE's WrestleMania press release got everybody talking about the organisation ahead of this uniquely historic version of their legendary flagship.
The details weren't ideal but the timing certainly was - surely the company would go into the finer details of an absolute blockbuster of a story when they had hours of television to fill inside an empty building?
LOLWWE.
With wide eyes and dropped jaws awaiting something...anything more on the wrestling news story of the year, Raw opened with the three announcers in the ring instead of at their desk, previewing a some of the stuff everybody already knew about.
Robotic and robust, they didn't appear as charmingly flustered by their surroundings as contemporary company cornerstones Michael Cole and Triple H did a few days earlier. This was, as is so often the case on this particular broadcast, anything but raw.
To complete the extremely familiar tone to everything, they were then interrupted by a babyface with lots on his mind...