6 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE WrestleMania 37 - Night 2

2. A Successful Return To ‘Normal’

For two nights at least, things felt almost normal for the first time in more than a year. After going through an empty Performance Center, to NXT trainees filling in as the PC audience, to the ThunderDome, it’s been a wild ride for WWE.

This weekend’s WrestleMania might have been operating at about 1/3 capacity, but seeing and hearing the crowd react to entrances and matches reminded you what’s been missing from the industry we love. (Of course, there’s still the knee-jerk cringing when you see people in close quarters, some of whom weren’t masked.)

Real fans chanting “Yes!” to Daniel Bryan’s entrance, singing along to Sami Zayn’s theme music, audibly anticipating Kevin Owens’ Stunner to Logan Paul, screaming loudly for Edge, and booing the Fiend’s disappearance illustrated the difference between the ThunderDome shows we’ve endured for the past several months and the real McCoy.

It’s probably going to be a while before we see this on a regular basis – although you have to imagine WWE is considering whether they could pull off a live crowd at least for PPVs given the energy the crowd fed to the wrestlers – so hopefully everyone enjoyed it.

And hopefully there were no negative consequences from the large gathering of fans.