6 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE Raw (12 June - Review)

3. Fairweather Fans

It would be easy to listen to the fans Monday night sing Seth Rollins’ song, react to Cody Rhodes and Dominik Mysterio, and lose their minds during the main event tag title match and assume that this was a hot crowd who greatly enjoyed themselves.

But if you turned on Raw at almost any other point, you’d have been met with the sounds of silence, with fans sitting on their hands during matches until they would inevitably come up for the conclusion of the bouts.

It’s a really uncanny and disturbing trend with fans who plunk down hard-earned money to sit in the crowd like they’re watching a tennis match.

They’re there to do all the audience participation parts – sing Seth’s song incessantly, do all the call-and-answer parts like yell “Miz TV” and “tiny balls” and then sit there silently for everything else Miz does – and come alive in a Pavlovian response to certain parts of matches, but by and large, the fans aren’t there to watch wrestling matches and react to the drama or athleticism.

It would be like going to a sporting event and sitting there quietly for everything except goals/touchdowns/home runs and any kind of halftime or pre-game entertainment.