8 WWE Matches Where The Crowd Was The Star
Sometimes the crowd is hot, sometimes they're just hijackers. Either way, these ones stole the show.
More than any other artistic medium, pro wrestling is profoundly influenced by its audience. Unlike live theatre, a wrestling audience is encouraged to participate and provide the tone for the match. Without a hot crowd, a match would struggle to or outright fail at connecting with an audience viewing it on television.
However, in WWE, there’s always a balance of desire for audience participation, and a want for tone control. If WWE had their way, you the audience would cheer for their babyfaces, boo their heels, pop for the #historical #moments, and otherwise just be complicit in the narrative they want to tell.
But as is, WWE audiences often take matters into their own hands and become the stars of the show. Often, this is done through rejection of the matches WWE puts on, chanting for irrelevant topics, booing the faces, cheering the heels, and just otherwise calling attention to their lack of interest in what WWE wants. Sometimes, WWE can expect when they’ll have a “bizarro-world” crowd, and thus book the matches around and storylines around that fact.
But often it's in vain, and the crowd steals the show anyhow.
8. Sheamus Vs. Randy Orton (RAW, 08/4/2013)
It would be easy to write an entry on the crowd throughout the whole episode of RAW that followed WrestleMania XXIX, as they were raucous the entire night, but it’s during the match between Sheamus and Randy Orton where we saw true anarchy. Not having any interest in stale babyfaces Orton and Sheamus battling for the right to face the Big Show, the fans in the Izod Center proceeded to chant for literally anything else, not even reacting to any of the moves in the match.
Instead, we were treated to chants for RVD, ECW, CM Punk, ring announcer Justin Roberts, and each individual member of the commentary team. It got to the point where the entire team was laughing along, not paying attention to the match, and just in general getting akick out of the audience’s indifference. When the crowd started doing the Mexican wave, Lawler actually said, “I think they’ve resorted to doing the Mexican wave.” In a way, King was outright admitting that the match was toss given he went with the word "resorting".
This RAW crowd was so chaotic and memorable, WWE actually gave them a Slammy at the end of 2013 for best crowd. That seems like a good idea. Surely, that wouldn’t encourage other crowds to hijack shows and derail potentially important matches. Surely...