7 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw (8 May - Results & Review)

1. This Isn’t ThunderDome 2.0

Cody Rhodes
WWE.com

Just days after a wildly successful – and extremely loud – trip to Puerto Rico, WWE felt like the hottest product on Earth. Fans chanted and cheered nearly everything, with deafening noise permeating SmackDown and Backlash.

Flash forward to Raw Monday night, and WWE was forced to pipe in ThunderDome-era fake crowd boos for Brock Lesnar. The fake noise was fairly obvious and almost distracting by how even and static it was, never wavering as Lesnar screamed into the mic.

That’s really bad on its own, but even if WWE felt like they needed to use crowd sweeteners to make Lesnar’s appearance feel more impactful, the fact that is the best they can do in 2023 is just inexcusable.

Do better. At the very least, don’t make it so obvious you’re piping in noise, unless you want to get called out and mocked.

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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.