13 Ups And 23 Downs For WWE In 2020

10. ThunderDome Creates Unique Experience

WWE Thunderdome
WWE

Credit where credit is due: The WWE ThunderDome was a much-needed upgrade for WWE programming.

Once live shows with audiences were shut down, WWE reverted to holding empty arena shows at their Performance Center. The novelty quickly wore off and it became very uncomfortable. WWE tried to compensate by adding “fans” to the mix – NXT developmental wrestlers who weren’t yet on TV regularly cheering and booing at the action. It was a decent attempt, but it too wore thin after a while.

Enter the ThunderDome. Similar to other national sports, it employed numerous video screens ringing the arena with fans video conferencing in to “watch” the action and cheer. It’s far from perfect – the crowd noise is actually piped in, and not the reactions of the fans watching – but the visual is much more appealing and looks much closer to a typical WWE program experience. Throw in the return of pyro and flames and you’ve got a pretty good appearance to the show.

It will be great to get back to seeing real people in a WWE arena again hopefully in 2021, but the digital faces we’ve been looking at in the ThunderDome have been an acceptable substitute.

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.