From Nick @_NL92_: Do you feel that anybody debuting on Raw/SD should only do so with a hot crowd? Hot crowds make the effort to react to people.
Yes absolutely. It's a great idea in theory because it would give somebody a strong impression with the fans right off the bat. After all these years, WWE has to know what cities give the best reactions and what ones are just average at best. The best debut ever was arguably Chris Jericho in August of 1999. That was in Chicago, which as we know is one of the best wrestling cities there is. If that was in a smaller market or a city with a less interested crowd, would it have been as big of a deal? Maybe. We will never know. Being in Chicago probably helped him. When the Adam Rose character debuted in Albany on the May 5th edition of Raw the response for him was lukewarm. The fans just didn't seem to care about him. Maybe WWE made the mistake of putting him on too late in the show because the crowd was pretty quiet by that point. Perhaps they wanted to see him in a match instead of simply spouting out his catchphrases while hoping for a response. This past week on Raw, Rose did receive a great reaction in London, England so maybe your idea is right and that WWE should have saved his debut for that show. They started him on the Albany show because they wanted to give him about a month of TV time before Payback to put him in a match with Jack Swagger, but it wouldn't have hurt him if they waited to start him off this past week in front of the hotter crowd in England. This week on Smackdown, Bo Dallas debuted in front of the London, England crowd. He's a heel so it's not like he got cheered, but the reaction to him wasn't that strong. That's a bit surprising because the London crowd is usually better than that.
John wrote at WhatCulture from December 2013 to December 2015. It was fun, but it's over for now. Follow him on Twitter @johnreport. You can also send an email to mrjohncanton@gmail.com with any questions or comments as well.
