4 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw (15 December - Results & Review)

1. Dead Crowd Kills Raw’s Energy

After the opening segment of the show, it seemed like a safe assumption that we were in store for a hot show with a fired-up crowd.

It only took 10 minutes to completely disprove that assumption, as the Hershey audience went silent for large parts of the night, resulting in the dreaded “hair dryer noise” from the crowd, a dull, monotonous murmur that served as the soundtrack for much of the evening.

The fans were quiet for large parts of the matches and even CM Punk’s in-ring promo, only coming up for some signature spots or some particularly spicy comments. The most glaring example came during the Women’s World Championship match, where fans basically sat on their hands for the entirety of the contest until it became clear that Stephanie Vaquer was about to hit the Devil’s Kiss on Raquel Rodriguez, which shows you how conditioned they’ve become.

While the fans deserve some criticism, really, the blame must be laid at WWE’s collective feet, as they’ve spent years training audiences to not treat the matches themselves as important athletic competitions where the outcomes are consequential. They’ve taught fans that what happens during the first three-quarters of a match ultimately is unimportant, and that entrances, catchphrases, signature spots, and “moments” are what’s truly important.

Conditioning fans to focus on only certain aspects of your product means that they don’t react to the other 75% of what happens during a live broadcast, so they sit there politely until it’s time to either chant “This is awesome” for a basic wrestling sequence, or to freak out because Vaquer is performing a move that makes Booker T climax.

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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.