LIVE AT SMACKDOWN – Top Five Impressions from an in-person experience including off-air segments, observing different types of fans, too many titles

It’s always great when I am fortunate enough to have the opportunity to see live professional wrestling, but when the big WWE trucks roll into your area, it’s a huge event seeing today’s top stars live and in person. Living in Colorado, I usually get one opportunity a year to overspend on a small, uncomfortable chair where I have to wait in line to watch a show I can see at home and have the commentary for context. And I try to never miss it. I love live events, be it wrestling, concerts, or even sports where they let the best team win, instead of the ones who sell the most merchandise.

This year’s trip to Denver was a double episode of Friday Night Smackdown. The stars were out, as we had a few I was unsure would be in attendance that night. Logan Paul, A.J. Lee, and Becky Lynch all had at least cameo appearances. Having gone to live events like this for four decades, as an insider wrestling fan, a father, and as a business person, I’m always curious about aspects of the show. Five lasting impressions from this trip to be in attendance at a WWE show.

New In-Between Taping Segment

My first standout impression had nothing to do with any matches, wrestlers, or TV segments. This was not the first time I’ve had a countdown to cheer for the cameras. They’re shooting hype segments for commercial breaks, and it makes sense that we play along for that. Right after catching our cheers though, we were asked to boo. I am to assume these were shots used for filler dumping the show in case too many started leaving or the crowd wasn’t making enough noise, or even worse, the wrong noise they wanted us to make for a segment that could be cleaned up in post.

Being in a Crowd of Yeeters

Wrestling and going out to any live event is supposed to be fun. In fact, I always try to stop to reflect at some point (we do a lot of deep reflection here in Colorado, must be something in our plants), to look around and simply enjoy other peoples’ joy. To see a crowd of over 10,000 people waving arms up and down to entrance music is unity, it’s joy. As Matthew McConaughey would say, “L-I-V-I-N, that’s livin.’”

I hear nonsense about wrestling fans on the internet down voting his videos, making a case for Jey Uso being undeserving, but I didn’t see too many people garner that type of attention.

Dumb Tag Finish

This was less about attending the show and more about the show itself, but I only get a tiny bit of platform to air my grievances, so while I am occupying a platform…

Let’s say you have a job, and your success at that job was a win and loss record. Now, your boss comes to you and asks why you gave up trying to win, and I said, “But boss, they messed with my uniform! I can’t win if my uniform is messed up. So I let them beat me. Maybe I’ll get another chance, and my uniform will look great on me at the end of the match, so when I get my hand raised, I’ll look perfect.”

Silly scenario aside, Axiom is not a luchador whose identity was handed down by multiple generations and needs his secret identity kept safe so he could get a common job without being recognized. He was winning the match, had his mask taken off, so he lets himself take the pinfall? No option to keep your face in the match until your tag partner helps you or you’re hit with something even more devastating? Just pin me, and this match and its corresponding pay just don’t mean much to me.

Belts are tripping over them on both companies

“Dude, you’re barely even a champion. Sure, you’ve got a title, but only one?”

This could be how someone thinks about a wrestler. If so many people have titles, then what do titles mean? If they are a real star, they’d have at least two titles. On AEW, a Trios Champion is also the Men’s World Champion after a three month feud where he should be defending his own title belt. We also have (fill in the number at the time of this posting)-Belt Mone.

On Smackdown, you have a new Women’s World Champion and a new Women’s U.S. Champion. Titles are there to help build your talent, and instead of lining up challengers for your new champions, it looks like the two are set to feud? How does that build your division?

ARTICLE CONTINUED BELOW…

Check out the latest episode of the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Post-show covering the latest episode of Smackdown: CLICK HERE to stream (or search “wade Keller” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other iOS or Android app to subscribe free)

The Wrestling Fan vs. the WWE Fan

Part of the reason there has always been so much division in opinion between wrestling fans and tribalism is to help point out what type of fan you are. The wrestling fan watches WWE, probably AEW or TNA. Those fans are the ones who travel for shows, overspend on merch and meet & greets, as well as being ones that travel for special events and have an action figure collection that could beat the ass if any 7-year olds’ toy collection. That’s the type of fan that reads articles like mine (well, that and my mom anyway).

Then there is the WWE fan. There are aspects of the show they love. Many of them are children or watch with children. Maybe it’s just habit viewing or there’s a character that grabbed them and they want to follow what’s happening with that performer. Whatever the case, there are so many that, after years of watching WWE, have no idea that people like Chris Jericho and Zach Ryder have still been performing on a regular basis. To them, it’s a WWE show and presentation. If you’re not a Transformer, they don’t want your Go-Bots, no matter if they’re so similar.

We all have different tastes and what attracts us to this product. Going to a live event always reminds me of that. It reminds me that not everything that WWE does is what a specific, although dedicated and large spending section of that audience, wants. They still need simple kid characters for the next generation to follow. I was never a John Cena fan because of this. Wasn’t my wrestling. He’s not as good as [fill in the blank]. We can be a bit selfish in our IWC universe. I saw a lot of happy faces out there enjoying themselves and making what I hope for the industry are lifelong attachments.

Now, if TKO could just do something about these ticket prices so the next generation can afford to take the next generation to!

(Griffin is a lifelong fan of wrestling, superheroes, and rebellious music of all forms. He is the owner of Nerdstalgia, and you can shop online, learn about visiting the store in Colorado Springs, or catch him at a comic con in the Rocky Mountain area by going to http://nerdstalgia.shop.)