18 Ups & 15 Downs For WWE In 2023

7. Those Crowds

For the longest time this year, WWE programming has been dominated by a strange juxtaposition: arenas full of fans, piled high to the rafters, sitting silently throughout large portions of the show, only coming to life for entrances, signature spots and finishes to matches.

The crowds seemingly aren’t wrestling fans – not in the traditional sense of fans who appreciate a good technical or high-flying match and respond accordingly when something good is happening right in front of them. Rather, they’re there to sing along to Seth Rollins’ theme, yell “Yeah!” and “Yeet!” and come up for finishing sequences after sitting on their hands for the first 12 minutes of a 15-minute TV match.

This has nothing to do with WWE piping in boos for Dominik Mysterio – sweetening the crowd noise is just a fact of life, and the younger Mysterio will get his praise later for his work.

Fans in recent months have come to life better than they were throughout the first half of the year, but there still are shows where matches and segments play out to a silence that seems impossible in these full arenas. It seems incomprehensible that fans would pay good money to sit in the upper deck of these facilities and act like they’re in church, but it’s been the rule, not the exception for much of the year.