10 Secrets You Only Learn Attending WWE House Shows
The things you see when nobody else does...
Following pro wrestling often feels like an ethics test you're bound to fail.
You can love it, but dislike how it looks. You can love your favourites with the knowledge that they could one day be revealed to be monstrous IRL. You can love the WWE brand without taking personal joy from the news that Vince McMahon's personal wealth has increased by orders of magnitude or that the company overall will be immensely profitable this year in spite of half of the world coming to a complete standstill.
April's "Black Friday" talent cuts shouldn't have ever happened, but then nor should have that awesome episode of SmackDown from November 2019 that saw most of the blue brand unable to leave Saudi Arabia as McMahon and Mohammed bin Salman allegedly clashed over cash. And people loved that.
Wrestling's very continuation became an ethical dilemma in 2020, but that's not even accounting for WWE's failure to truly level up (down?) to the Empty Arena Era challenge. Some stuff has worked, but the lack of live crowds has spotlighted the company's situational rigidity, with wrestlers themselves partially detached due to the complete collapse of the house show circuit.
The live events coming to a sudden conclusion may have saved the wrestlers some bumps, but the overall customer interaction experience feels more lacking than ever. Particularly when it comes to reminding fans across the globe why they chose such a mad pursuit to follow in the first place...
10. Wrestlers Are Massive
It got a little over-bearing in the mid-2000s when, having buried his character about a hundred times, WWE starting pushing the size of The Big Show's giant hands as a reason to buy tickets to a show.
Poor Michael Cole or Joey Styles or whichever poor c*nt was on the wrong end of Vince McMahon's producer's mic would have to shoehorn frying pans, typewriters and all sorts of cooked meats into conversation to get across how big they were every time he threw a punch or chop.
On his recent Network docuseries, The Undertaker noted how gutted he felt about sending the Super ShowDown 2019 crowd home with such a stinker after his mini-disaster with Bill Goldberg. This tends not to happen after the house shows with at least one big bruiser on the card, and has informed the company's 'Land Of The Giants' philosophy for over three decades.
McMahon's policy on the live shows mirrors how he wants people to respond to his Superstars in airports. If you're walking out saying "The Big Show is f*cking huge though, isn't he?!" without even mentioning the match, it's job done.