8 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE Raw After WrestleMania 40 (8 April - Results & Review)

6. Fans Bring The Heat

WWE Raw Triple H
WWE

For several years in the 2010s, the Raw after WrestleMania became must-see television if only for how raucous and rowdy fans would be. The packed arenas would shake with deafening chants as fans hijacked the shows.

Rather than lean into it, Vince McMahon would seek out ways to neuter the fans, pretending to lean into it by doing the “Bizarro World” method to describe the crowd, and then famously tearing up the script last year and putting on the most tepid post-'Mania Raw in memory, a huge disappointment and one that could have killed off any momentum they had.

Monday night, however, the fans were back in full force, at least for the first hour. The crowd let The Rock have both barrels during his in-ring promo, shouting him down for what seemed like a solid five to 10 minutes, chanting, “Shut the f*** up!” and calling him an “a**hole” repeatedly. They name-dropped the Undertaker to get under Rock’s skin and told him he sucks as well. And they serenaded him as he told them he was leaving for a while.

It was tremendous stuff from the fans that felt like a bygone era coming back for one night. When fans can drown out The Rock and make him have to take a detour with his promo, you know it’s potent stuff.

Advertisement
 
Posted On: 
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.