7 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (April 18)
6. A Muted Crowd(?)
When Raw was introduced as emanating from the O2 Arena, viewers would be forgiven if they assumed that they were in for a raucous evening from the crowd. London fans are among some of the most passionate fans out there. So it was a bit of a shock to hear or better yet, not hear the crowd as Raw wore on.
There is debate online about whether WWE edited the crowd noise, effectively muting or turning down the sound on the fans. Theres no hard evidence its a difficult thing to prove unless someone recorded a segment of a match live and it doesnt match with what came through the TV but it felt pretty obvious that arena mics were not at peak operation. Consider how raucous fans were at NXT TakeOver: London in December, for example.
If WWE did indeed mute the crowd, then it depends why to determine how big of a transgression it was. If it was fans singing, then it might be a little understandable for an American audience that doesnt really do that. But editing crowd reactions to matches and other segments is just crowd manipulation, pure and simple.
Can anyone who attended live shed a little light?