7 Ups And 5 Downs From WWE Raw (May 25)

5. Only Took Two Months To Figure It Out

Apollo Crews Andrade
WWE.com

It was 16 March when WWE broadcast its first empty arena episode of Raw, coming live from the Performance Center. After 10 weeks of Raw, SmackDown, NXT and two PPVs emanating from the quiet, barren facility, WWE finally decided to shake things up a bit.

They decided to follow AEW’s example and populate the “arena” with wrestlers playing the role of fans. In this case, it was a couple dozen NXT developmental superstars who stood spaced out and behind glass partition walls, reacting as Raw wrestlers delivered promos and competed in matches.

The result was a fuller, richer atmosphere, with laughter, cheers and boos throughout the program, adding something that’s been missing from WWE programming for more than two months.

Yes, there’s a dig at WWE for basically waiting weeks upon weeks before doing what AEW did, but we’ll give credit to the company for acknowledging that the silent, empty arena had long outlived its usefulness and needed to be changed.

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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.