5 Reasons NXT Is NOT Better Than WWE (It Just Feels Like It Is)

4. The Crowd

Ahhh the NXT crowd. They say a good wrestling match is only made great by the crowd and boy, the NXT crowd has been making matches great for months now. They know when to cheer, they know when to boo, they've completely bought in to the product and it makes the product that much better for it. It's reminiscent of the old ECW fan base, except without the vulgarities. There's even a trend starting of chanting "NXT" at WWE events. It's the ECW crowd turned babyface. NXT is shot with monthly tapings at Full Sail University in front of a small crowd of somewhere between 400-500. That means that the crowd has many repeat attendees, who watch a few shows at a time. It's a lot easier to remember week-to-week story progression when you watch it all at once, as anyone with a Netflix account can attest to. It is also a fairly cult show, only available on the WWE Network. Which means there's not a lot of casual fans there. The NXT fans are loyal to the product. So when you film a Pay Per View or a "Special", you get a crowd that knows the wrestlers, knows the stories, knows the show inside-out and is fiercely proud of their affiliation with the brand. That makes for great wrestling, but it is not a fair representation of the crowd at a bigger WWE event. When WWE films a Raw episode, they're not filming in front of a small band of loyal followers. A Raw crowd is made up of thousands of people, some of whom watched last weeks Raw episode, some didn't. Some are there with a "Cesaro Section" sign, some are there looking for something to make their three kids shut up for a few hours. Some boo Cena, some cheer him. The NXT crowd is not the "WWE Universe". If you want to know what would happen if you take the NXT show and put it on Raw on Monday nights, just watch Adam Rose's debut. Or Emma's. The NXT crowd is small enough to have the mentality of a community; they share their likes and dislikes together, making it much easier to identify something that works and run with it. Main roster WWE wrestlers are having to win over thousands of people at a time, in an arena that's so big that a chant at one end can't always be heard at the other. When they inevitably don't win over all these people at once, the gut-reaction of the internet is to blame WWE Creative. And while WWE Creative is sometimes to blame for a wrestler not getting over (cough Cesaro cough cough) it certainly is not to blame for the sometimes muddled reaction as they try to please everyone in the arena, together, at the same time. That's something that just comes with the territory of playing to such a huge audience.