4 Ups And Downs From Last Night's WWE Smackdown (Jan 9th)
DOWNS
4. Canned Heat
We all know that Smackdown is a taped program, which gives WWE an opportunity to pipe in crowd noise when the audience doesnt quite react how the company wants. But sometimes, it gets downright silly, and when youre used to watching live Raw on Monday nights, it can be quite jarring at times. While Seth Rollins was recapping Monday night, he named-dropped each of the three fired wrestlers, pausing between each name. The crowd cheered loudly for each of them, including Erick Rowan, who has come out to absolute silence in recent Raw appearances. Was he suddenly madly popular in Laredo, Texas? Another instance was an obvious fake reaction to graphics about upcoming matches. Fans know that WWE is going to artificially manufacture crowd reactions when it can, but the company could at least try to not make it so painfully obvious. It can take you out of the moment pretty quickly.
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.
