5 Ups And 6 Downs From WWE Payback 2020

Downs...

6. White Noise

Sheamus Big E
WWE.com

Unfortunately, we’re not talking about Sheamus’ side slam, but the artificial crowd noise pumped into the ThunderDome Sunday night.

When the new WWE arena debuted on SmackDown a week-plus ago, there were some kinks to work out, which they seemingly fixed for SummerSlam. However, it was back to just an awful, dull roar Sunday night during Payback. Sure, there was crowd noise to accompany the fans, but in no way did it match the action in the ring.

Hot tags were ignored by the “fans,” and they didn’t pop for high-impact moves and pinfalls the way you would expect. The result made it clear that you were watching something with canned heat, which took you out of the moment. At least during SummerSlam, it felt a little more natural.

They really need to get this fixed. At least when you had the NXT trainees at the Performance Center, the reactions matched what was happening in the ring. This just felt really artificial.

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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.