How WWE Raw Foreshadowed An Escape From The Empty Arena Era
Reality has bitten hard at many points over the past few months, but has anything hurt more than the continued realisation that things won't return to total normality with the wave of a magic wand? What was once the misty-eyed "I can't wait for the pubs to open" has become "how will pubs open?". The longing for a gig or play or comedy night now comes in-built with the qualifiers and bargaining of not getting but making the best of a bad situation. Wrestling's comeback from the bring has been managed from the off, stubbornly comprising itself less and less in various altered forms.
WWE ran a show, setting the standard for the industry. AEW followed suit and did a better job. WWE took aesthetic aspects to try and keep pace. They added plexiglass which - had they not flagrantly flouted the premise on Night g*ddamn One - was really inspired, and something Dynamite should do too. The TNT show's been scattering wrestler friends, family and even children into proceedings for weeks. WWE, based on instagram stories and the like, has been operating under something that looks like the world we used to know.
Most of us just want to see friends and family again or, if you're a parent, want your friends and family to see your kids for 24 f*cking hours, please, but wrestling wants and still needs people back. Perhaps, pending New York's continued challenges, a small atmospheric beast like the Manhattan Center can become the home of Raw again. Those hardcore locals might be six seats apart but what noise they'll all make when it bounces off that roof. AEW meanwhile popped the online world in a match that took place in front of 80,000 empty seats. Imagine, if you even dare, what they'd do with 50-100 ticket paying spread out lunatics that can't believe their luck.
Raw was a big next step for WWE, just as pay-per-view (and the presentation of said pay-per-view) was for AEW. Only when thinking beyond the norm have both brands generated real escapism rather than the sort a mentally and physically exhausted public are trying to summon. Out-of-the-box is satisfying those that can't get out-of-the-house. Just imagine what they'll have planned next - because that's exactly what they're currently doing.