5 Ups And 8 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (March 9th)
DOWNS
8. Dead Crowd In Pittsburgh?
Some will note that the audience chanted Yes! along with Daniel Bryan, went nuts for Brock Lesnar and came unhinged when Randy Orton RKOd Seth Rollins, so the long periods of silence and subdued reactions are countered. But theyre forgetting one thing: This is Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh was also the home of Royal Rumble 2014, the birthplace of the Yes! Movement. It was a Pittsburgh crowd that so vociferously turned on the Rumble match and eventual winner Batista (and #30 entrant Rey Mysterio) that WWE would have no choice weeks later than to insert Bryan into the WrestleMania main event. Pittsburgh is also where the crowd viciously lashed out at the 487th match between Orton and John Cena, nearly sending Randy into fits. So with that history, this should have been a rabid crowd that turned up the volume, either in support of certain performers or against others. But you cant really blame the crowd entirely. They werent given much material to work with.
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.
