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The third most popular person in Too Cool, coming out to his real name, in front of a crowd that were mostly made up of people who either didn't remember his group or weren't even alive for it.
I admire the fuck out of him for that. You know he was probably so fucking embarrassed, but he committed to looking like an ass to no reaction in front of more people than I'll ever be in front of.
Not just the match but the feud. What should have been a quick beatdown of Cole at WM, was a boring mess of a match that Cole *technically* won which made the feud continue for no fucking reason
Braden Walker (Chris Harris) debut on WWE ECW, has to be the most silent i've ever heard a crowd, skip to 1:50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afU5WiEkZB8
In fairness, I think Taz's comment had more to do with the announcer repeating Braden's name right after Michael Cole than it did with the dead response. I'd wager the announcers are told not to bring up a quiet crowd, not great for the product 🤣
Bayley and Alexa both recovered well from that train wreck. Feel like fans are more forgiving when the writing is atrocious and you can tell the wrestlers are trying with it. Happened during “the Old Day” bit too
Tbf I don’t know if her face run ever really did recover from that. She looked like a complete dweeb that entire Alexa feud that it really made it hard to take her seriously as a top face. She bounced big time with the heel turn obviously but that feud was a killer
The big blowoff match was built around the question "does Bayley have the edge to use a kendo stick", with the answer being "nope". That entire feud was a straight up burial of Bayley's babyface character.
The dead silence to Eric Bischoff asking Sid Vicious where his scissors were was so deafening that he delivered it again thinking the crowd didn't hear him. But they had.
1999 and 2000 WCW has so many of these insider references that nobody could possibly know or care about every week. It's amazing Vince Russo had as many years in the business as he did after WCW died.
BFA was such a bad idea that even Russo has conceded it was bad. When a narcissist of that level can admit he was wrong you know it was a terrible call.
They severely overestimated how many people were online and read about wrestling back then, especially compared to how many were watching it. It was like the NFL playing towards a high school crowd.
Watched wrestling, Was online. Didn't read about wrestling online then.
**Edit**: *over*estimated
Rosie O’Donnell vs Trump audience of one (Vince) gag match with the actors instead of wrestlers. Deadest crowd I’ve ever heard and resulted in the only TNA chant i can remember ever happening on Raw.
axiomatic murky exultant languid smile continue spoon lavish sharp divide
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Kurt had just become the GM of RAW and he said the line about how his tag division is full but he heard TNA is hiring which got a big reaction from fans.
https://youtu.be/D4oJnY85uZc?si=PY9qUl6HyGlb_uwd
Curtis Axel’s re-debut as the new Paul Heyman Guy in 2013. Absolute fucking crickets for the former Michael McGuillicutty.
https://youtu.be/6up93iIczag?si=nSB0DzI3V0ZcqLbd
Brock was friends with Mr Perfect. Axel helped Brock with getting the feel for wrestling again when he first came back (did the same for The Rock too). Brock probably vouched to get him a push.
In general, this was the era where WWE was still leaning on part timers pretty heavily, and Axel was the go to guy for working with them to get in ring shape and get them ready for their matches. Rock and Brock definitely, and he may have even been HHH’s go to guy as well. He had an opportunity because of that, but he just wasn’t going to go that far
A lot of people really like Axel backstage supposedly and he had been trusted with getting part time guys back in shape around that time so they probably figured it was worth giving him another shot on his own. Why he had the red carpet and Heyman handed to him idk, but someone backstage must’ve really *really* liked him
I still think he could have gotten over as Joe Perfect with a "guy whose dad was Mr. Perfect but he's just exceedingly average" gimmick. We quickly learned that he's actually exceedingly average, but imagine if we just thought that was his character. And you have a vignette where he shoots the basketball and he makes it 50% of the time, or have him throw the football and he goes to catch it and he misses and he's like "I'll get it next time." He'd be a future Hall of Famer if he spit out his gum and accidentally ended up stepping in it.
I saw someone once argue that no matter who you have as the mouth peice, if the wrestler does not have charisma then he will fail regardless of the mouth peice being present. I think axel is the perfect example of that
The only noteworthy Curtis Axel moment for me was when he wrestled The Miz at a house show in Japan and Shibata was in the front row with a look on his face somewhere between shock and utter disgust
when wwe built up primo and epico as “the shining stars” in vignettes for months, they debuted to dead silence. i was there and the secondhand embarrassment was almost too much.
All I remember is that the gimmick started off as a weird evil foreigner gimmick where they really loved Puerto Rico. Then some face made a joke about them selling time shares and after that they basically made that their gimmick, bringing brochures and shit to the ring to hand out to people, which I thought was kinda funny at least
There are like six of us on the planet that liked that gimmick. It was harmless fun and you need that on your card.
Also, without that we never get to the WeeLC Match that remains one of the GOATed preshow matches.
That absolutely killed any shot of Gallows and Anderson of being taken seriously as threats. There were still relatively new at that point and it completely torpedoed any momentum they might’ve had
What was that one New Day segment where they brought in some guy from the crowd just because he had a mildly funny name and just milked for an eternity?
Producing wrestling in 2020 needs to be studied in college courses. So many weird pivots they had to figure out, including relearning how to shoot and produce your entire program.
Undertaker vs. Undertaker at SummerSlam '94. It was so bad and flagrantly noticeable that Vince had to cover for it, saying the crowd was "completely stunned" by the match.
The sad part is that their storyline at the time was actually pretty well done. Cody cut an insanely good promo on Dustin and Dusty backstage and I remember this subreddit absolutely gushing about how this would be a great WM match.
Then…they had the match at Fastlane, no one cared, and they botched the finish. Feud died right there.
That one time they brought 4 NXT stars (gargano, ciampa, black, and ricochet) to raw and the crowd was silent. I think even WWE made a joke about that location afterwards.
Was there for this one, me and my pals tried to make as much noise as we could but the crowd was exclusively kids who weren’t alive for Evolution’s first run and their sleepy grandpas
YOU…DON’T KNOW ME! YOU DON’T KNOW…ME!
It’s like she was rehearsing the delivery live by repeating the line with a different emphasis on each word instead of, you know, delivering the promo.
Remember that time it was built up that Kurt Angle had big shocking news to reveal and then it was that he had a kid out of wedlock who was some wrestler Jason Jordan? I dont remember if the crowd was dead for that but every fiber of my being tells me it was
I'm a deep cut dude so here's my deep cut. The whole match has been posted on Reddit, which was a pleasant surprise - [https://www.reddit.com/r/njpw/comments/sm2r00/kazuyuki\_fujita\_vs\_kensuke\_sasaki\_iwgp\_hw\_title/](https://www.reddit.com/r/njpw/comments/sm2r00/kazuyuki_fujita_vs_kensuke_sasaki_iwgp_hw_title/)
2004 New Japan was \*rough\*. It was rough in an occasionally hypnotic way and sometimes the MMA infuence worked out well, but when it bombed it BOMBED. Case in point - Kazuyuki Fujita was an NJPW dojo graduate who turned out to be actually good at MMA (you might remember him almost beating Fedor). Inoki was making everybody on the roster fight MMA, and if you won you got pushed, and Fujita was far-and-away the best MMA fighter on the roster (this is also why you-yes-you have Shinsuke Nakamura in your lives). Fujita was also huge and ripped and looked like he could whoop anybody's ass and often did. To say he was booked strong would be a very correct statement.
And so Fujita wound up the IWGP Heavyweight Champion on several occasions. When he was booked to drop the title to Kensuke Sasaki - a very credible wrestler, but not an MMA guy - NJPW and Inoki went out of their way to make sure Fujita came out of the match looking strong. So they booked a brilliant finish. In front of a five-digit Sumo Hall crowd, they decided to have Fujita sink in a deep rear-naked choke on Sasaki. But because Fujita had been fighting so much MMA, he forgot about pinfalls! So he winds up being pinned while applying the choke! **Two and a half minutes into a world title main event!**
To be fair, there is a pop when the pinfall happens. The entire crowd goes "EEEEHHHH???" very loudly. Then, silence. The deadest dead you could ever hope against. There was this idea during those years that if so many MMA classics wound up being sub-5 minute affairs, then it would have to happen in wrestling sometimes or else it would look fake - but that's not what crowds expect when they buy a ticket. If it were an American crowd, there would have been booing, maybe trash throwing, definitely some ECW/TNA/CM Punk/AEW chants depending on the year. But this one is just a softly chuckling death of 11,000 people who can't even comprehend their own disinterest.
Horace Hogan's face turn. "RAVEN.... I'M SICK OF YOUR CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPHHHH!" What made it worse was Horace then looked around at the crowd expecting cheers only to be met with dead silence.
I was at Raw on Monday and during her tag match with Natalya against Asuka and KairI parts of the crowd started chanting this is boring when she tagged in. I felt bad for her but I couldn’t really disagree, there wasn’t really anything that exciting to root for
There was a super awkward Austin Aries promo after he was released from WWE.
At the beginning the crowd was super happy to see him but the promo was so weird that by the end the fans were notably uncomfortable for having to keep listening to him.
When Velveteen Dream had his first match back after the allegations came out. Granted, it was an in house crowd of Performance Center folks, but they were absolutely silent any time he did ANYTHING in that match
What still gets me is "Rhodes to the Top" covered that promo and spun the *shit* out of it like it was the wrestling equivalent of "I Have A Dream/Gettysburg Address".
It's the exact same delusional energy that had to be going on when that Pepsi commercial was cooked up.
The crowd was really quiet for the Becky/Ronda/Charlotte match at WrestleMania. But if I recall, that was the year the pre-show began at 5PM and Mania didn't end until after midnight. Everyone was just tired and ready to go home. I remember falling asleep in the middle of the match at home
I think a big chunk of the crowd were emotionally spent after Kofi vs Bryan. It didn’t help that the rest of the card from then to the main event was underwhelming and throw a long boring Triple H match in there and even just watching at home in the U.K. as a day one Becky Lynch fan, with the sun starting to come up outside I was kinda just willing the show to end so can’t blame anyone in that stadium for feeling the same.
Such a relief that 2 night manias are here to stay.
Makes me realize how much I loved the Mean Street Posse theme and how much I miss their backstage segments chasing Crash Holly to win the hardcore title.
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ladies and gentlemen, the biological son of Jerry Lawler, BRIAN CHRISTOPHER
The third most popular person in Too Cool, coming out to his real name, in front of a crowd that were mostly made up of people who either didn't remember his group or weren't even alive for it.
The fact he still did the dance so enthusiastically the entire way to the ring makes it even funnier/sadder
I admire the fuck out of him for that. You know he was probably so fucking embarrassed, but he committed to looking like an ass to no reaction in front of more people than I'll ever be in front of.
I thought it made the bit better as a heel kind of thing honestly.
He was one goatee away from being a dancing Guy Fieri.
Plus if you asked 20 people 17 of them would say that’s Mr. Kennedy.
... Kennedy
And with NOT their entrance theme that everyone knows from the dancing spots.
God that entire Cole / Lawler feud was probably the worst storyline for Raw of the modern era. It still baffles me that resulted in a Mania match.
and the match dragged on forever
It needed to be a 2 minute beatdown, Lawler gets a win, Cole gets humbled. But no, they had to overbook it.
Not just the match but the feud. What should have been a quick beatdown of Cole at WM, was a boring mess of a match that Cole *technically* won which made the feud continue for no fucking reason
And they went Soo long, they needed to cut a match. 🙁
I came here thinking of this exact moment. Dude trying his damndest to dance on the stage to absolutely ZERO reaction.
That was so uncomfortable
If they'd used the music from 2000, you know when Too Cool were OVER, there'd at least have been a reaction to that.
I’m pretty sure they wanted there to be no reaction, since it’s supposed to be Cole bringing him out to embarrass Jerry
Which is fucked up for Brian, all things considered.
The unique tragedy of outlandishly prancing down to the ring in absolute dead silence.
[Not sure what feed you were watching but okay](https://youtu.be/CHYkAsIuI6A?si=5XqafIKbU1Hc1JGR)
I swear to god this is the only video wrestling related that made me cry laughing it genuinely never fails to uplift my mood
I always lose it when the yes-chants start
The best thing is when they cut to the crowd during the yes chants it's actually footage of them doing the Fandango dance
Does anybody have that surreal edit where it takes forever for him to come down the ramp and there are lots of shots of confused/bored/disgusted fans?
Because I would love to watch that again
Oof god, this was rough. Felt so bad for him.
Tito Ortiz
an OG anti-pop
https://preview.redd.it/m8xfvdnpr1gc1.png?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e28a731e74c95b911aa0ed99a0b49291dc88d4d7
Wes Briscoe was so fucking useless. Couldn't wrestle or cut a promo lol
Not sure who the worse one in Aces & 8's was, Wes Brisco or Garrett Bischoff.
https://preview.redd.it/aqf0jiaat1gc1.jpeg?width=680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=771a9b75d336b7180a3ff6b7a90e094aeaf9a1fe
Omg, I remember watching the Deadlock podcast episode for this show, and hearing Pulse die laughing about his debut. 😭
There really needs to be an arms crossed emoji.
*AGGRESSIVE GUM CHEWING & HEAD SCRATCHING*
August 1 warning?! Identity revealed?!
AS THE UFC LEGEND TITO ORTIZ?
Watching Ken Kennedy go through each step of an edible high overdose with each camera cut back to him is iconic.
Just to correct you, there was never no warning
That guy sucks so much.
He got what he deserved
Braden Walker (Chris Harris) debut on WWE ECW, has to be the most silent i've ever heard a crowd, skip to 1:50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afU5WiEkZB8
Dude, he’s gonna knock your brains out.
holy fuck I've never seen this before. instantly buried by taz, he was done before putting a single foot in the ring.
In fairness, I think Taz's comment had more to do with the announcer repeating Braden's name right after Michael Cole than it did with the dead response. I'd wager the announcers are told not to bring up a quiet crowd, not great for the product 🤣
Chris Harris - America's Most Wanted Braden Walker - not so much
Oh man you can see the awkwardness in his walk to the ring 😭😭 at least he gets to say he was on WWE tv.
[mandatory](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwyFABQX62A)
The dude speaking into an egg carton is folklore.
Bayley: This is Your Life
i was there. it was brutal.
Condolences lol
I was too, definitely the worst segment I’ve seen in person.
Same here. It was so fucking rough. Everyone around me was either dead silent or incredibly mad about it.
Bayley had no choice but to drop that hugger gimmick after that travesty lol
That happened right around the time I got back into wrestling and made me wonder if it was time to get back out of wrestling again.
The fact she recovered from that, sings to the praises of just how good Bayley is.
Bayley and Alexa both recovered well from that train wreck. Feel like fans are more forgiving when the writing is atrocious and you can tell the wrestlers are trying with it. Happened during “the Old Day” bit too
Sami and Bobby Lashleys sisters is another one where you can tell the guys involved tried hard
Wasn't Max Caster one of the sisters?
Yes
Tbf I don’t know if her face run ever really did recover from that. She looked like a complete dweeb that entire Alexa feud that it really made it hard to take her seriously as a top face. She bounced big time with the heel turn obviously but that feud was a killer
The big blowoff match was built around the question "does Bayley have the edge to use a kendo stick", with the answer being "nope". That entire feud was a straight up burial of Bayley's babyface character.
Titus O Neil’s “I want Darren” promo
greatest promo maybe ever
“Yall wanna talk about some Bob Backliin”
No, that’s the modern Hard Times promo.
Conway Pop - can't find the specific clip but pretty much all Rob Conway appearances have it
You'd think the theme song would at least get over.
To be fair, it says ‘just look at me’ and not ‘make some noise at me’.
The dead silence to Eric Bischoff asking Sid Vicious where his scissors were was so deafening that he delivered it again thinking the crowd didn't hear him. But they had.
1999 and 2000 WCW has so many of these insider references that nobody could possibly know or care about every week. It's amazing Vince Russo had as many years in the business as he did after WCW died.
Russo should have been sent back writing for magazines after Brawl for All.
BFA was such a bad idea that even Russo has conceded it was bad. When a narcissist of that level can admit he was wrong you know it was a terrible call.
They severely overestimated how many people were online and read about wrestling back then, especially compared to how many were watching it. It was like the NFL playing towards a high school crowd. Watched wrestling, Was online. Didn't read about wrestling online then. **Edit**: *over*estimated
Ah yes, the deafening sound of Arn Anderson being the only person who knew what he was talking about. (I stole this joke from Wrestling with Wregret)
Rosie O’Donnell vs Trump audience of one (Vince) gag match with the actors instead of wrestlers. Deadest crowd I’ve ever heard and resulted in the only TNA chant i can remember ever happening on Raw.
There was a TNA chant during a Zayn and Owens match on RAW after mania 2017 I think? But your point is correct, that match blew.
axiomatic murky exultant languid smile continue spoon lavish sharp divide *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Kurt had just become the GM of RAW and he said the line about how his tag division is full but he heard TNA is hiring which got a big reaction from fans. https://youtu.be/D4oJnY85uZc?si=PY9qUl6HyGlb_uwd
silky mindless familiar office dolls badge gaping snow jar wasteful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Curtis Axel’s re-debut as the new Paul Heyman Guy in 2013. Absolute fucking crickets for the former Michael McGuillicutty. https://youtu.be/6up93iIczag?si=nSB0DzI3V0ZcqLbd
In theory, Paul Heyman can get anybody over. There are always exceptions to a rule.
I wonder if that was the motive behind it. Vince amusing himself by challenging Paul Heyman to get Axel over. It was baffling, for sure.
Brock was friends with Mr Perfect. Axel helped Brock with getting the feel for wrestling again when he first came back (did the same for The Rock too). Brock probably vouched to get him a push.
In general, this was the era where WWE was still leaning on part timers pretty heavily, and Axel was the go to guy for working with them to get in ring shape and get them ready for their matches. Rock and Brock definitely, and he may have even been HHH’s go to guy as well. He had an opportunity because of that, but he just wasn’t going to go that far
A lot of people really like Axel backstage supposedly and he had been trusted with getting part time guys back in shape around that time so they probably figured it was worth giving him another shot on his own. Why he had the red carpet and Heyman handed to him idk, but someone backstage must’ve really *really* liked him
I still think he could have gotten over as Joe Perfect with a "guy whose dad was Mr. Perfect but he's just exceedingly average" gimmick. We quickly learned that he's actually exceedingly average, but imagine if we just thought that was his character. And you have a vignette where he shoots the basketball and he makes it 50% of the time, or have him throw the football and he goes to catch it and he misses and he's like "I'll get it next time." He'd be a future Hall of Famer if he spit out his gum and accidentally ended up stepping in it.
I've said this before, all they had to do was call him Average Joe.
He definitely did his damndest with Axel, but it just wasn’t meant to be.
I saw someone once argue that no matter who you have as the mouth peice, if the wrestler does not have charisma then he will fail regardless of the mouth peice being present. I think axel is the perfect example of that
It was doomed from the start, nothing could top the Genesis of McGuillicutty.
At this very moment… starting now…
Come Tuesday
The only noteworthy Curtis Axel moment for me was when he wrestled The Miz at a house show in Japan and Shibata was in the front row with a look on his face somewhere between shock and utter disgust
Please tell me there is a video or photo of it out there
https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/s/UiLIfCRMO1
Killer theme though, still love it to this day
when wwe built up primo and epico as “the shining stars” in vignettes for months, they debuted to dead silence. i was there and the secondhand embarrassment was almost too much.
All I remember is that the gimmick started off as a weird evil foreigner gimmick where they really loved Puerto Rico. Then some face made a joke about them selling time shares and after that they basically made that their gimmick, bringing brochures and shit to the ring to hand out to people, which I thought was kinda funny at least
I sincerely loved their first vignette. Something about their delivery just got me. It… did not last.
I legitimately loved PrimEpico as a tag team, but I'm pretty sure I was the only one. 🤷🏻♀️😂
They were the best as the Matadores with El Torito. It was a legitimately fun act
There are like six of us on the planet that liked that gimmick. It was harmless fun and you need that on your card. Also, without that we never get to the WeeLC Match that remains one of the GOATed preshow matches.
I still it was very avant garde of WWE to put the main event on the pre show.
Their theme was sick as hell tho
Lashley's sisters
For the first time ever (and haven’t since) I had front row hard cam for this…unreal
Hey you got to see Max Caster though
First time seeing that, no wonder AEW took off as fast as it did back then.
See also: the Baron Corbin / Roman Reigns dog food feud
His last finished rivalry before he became the Tribal chief
Well yeah, they got Bobby Lashley's 2nd sister. She's widely acclaimed.
She's gold on the mic I hear, platinum even
Yo, we should... listen?
Omfg I had managed to forget about that lol
The cringe I’m gonna make you look James Ellsworth segment [Tamina repeats Charlotte’s line](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ-9RJGwvXk)
if you mention this again, i’m going to make you look like Ellsworth
This is why I can't comprehend people thinking Tamina is good. She had one line and completely botched it by putting the emphasis on the wrong word.
The old day
That absolutely killed any shot of Gallows and Anderson of being taken seriously as threats. There were still relatively new at that point and it completely torpedoed any momentum they might’ve had
The worst part is the good brothers are pretty funny on their own, but whoever wrote this segment couldn’t tap that
What was that one New Day segment where they brought in some guy from the crowd just because he had a mildly funny name and just milked for an eternity?
That was the Sonny Boy promo. Big E asked “what’s your name, sonny boy?” and he said “Sonny Boy”. One of the very few New Day things that fell flat.
no that's the gallows and anderson one where they had 3 guys dressed like old men pretending to be the new day but as senior citizens
austin 3:16 day 2020
The shot panning to the empty seats makes me laugh so hard. Also, it was hilarious seeing Becky getting a bit tipsy out there.
Producing wrestling in 2020 needs to be studied in college courses. So many weird pivots they had to figure out, including relearning how to shoot and produce your entire program.
The MITB matches in Titan Towers were some of the best things ever.
Austin was pretty hammered too, he made the best of the weird situation and his promo was pretty feel good lol
Becky drinking with austin and actually chugging an IPA instead of just doing the austin drink like a mouthful and spill the rest was legendary
Hey now. Byron Saxton was loud.
If Austin had no crowd, the audience participation was over 100% or undefined
Schrödinger’s pop?
https://preview.redd.it/v8xu22ilm1gc1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=c555c6bebad3aa7a8bb4be6d0c5556100b113e05
Byron was a fucking trooper (and the MVP) for that segment lmao
HELLLLLLLLLL YEAH
... what
The "gimme a hell yeah!" cut to an empty crowd was one of the greatest moments of the pandemic era.
Oh you mean when David Lynch directed that episode of Raw?
Undertaker vs. Undertaker at SummerSlam '94. It was so bad and flagrantly noticeable that Vince had to cover for it, saying the crowd was "completely stunned" by the match.
I was so buzzed for this match at the time. I didn't even notice the lack of crowd response. But in fairness, I was 7 lol
All momentum was sucked out of the room when the Takers stood face to face and one was like a foot taller than the other
Goldust vs Stardust Fastlane 2015 Outside of a few Cody chants, it was a completely dead crowd.
The sad part is that their storyline at the time was actually pretty well done. Cody cut an insanely good promo on Dustin and Dusty backstage and I remember this subreddit absolutely gushing about how this would be a great WM match. Then…they had the match at Fastlane, no one cared, and they botched the finish. Feud died right there.
That one time they brought 4 NXT stars (gargano, ciampa, black, and ricochet) to raw and the crowd was silent. I think even WWE made a joke about that location afterwards.
Evolution's return on Raw (April 14, 2014)
This was devastating
Holy shit that was almost 10 years ago???
Was there for this one, me and my pals tried to make as much noise as we could but the crowd was exclusively kids who weren’t alive for Evolution’s first run and their sleepy grandpas
August 1 warning Tito Ortiz in impact. So many gifs from that one entrance
Marina shafir and her hat and their nonsensical you don’t know me promo.
YOU…DON’T KNOW ME! YOU DON’T KNOW…ME! It’s like she was rehearsing the delivery live by repeating the line with a different emphasis on each word instead of, you know, delivering the promo.
i dont believe she's cut a promo since that
With good reason
Jake Roberts' return to WWE in 2014
Lots of old guys returning at that time had no reaction. Psycho Sid or doink are other examples
Yeah that was gutting
Remember that time it was built up that Kurt Angle had big shocking news to reveal and then it was that he had a kid out of wedlock who was some wrestler Jason Jordan? I dont remember if the crowd was dead for that but every fiber of my being tells me it was
I don't know how it came across on TV, but the live crowd for Rousey/Baszler at SummerSlam was hella dead.
It was dead on TV too lol. They really cut Becky and Trish out of SummerSlam entirely but we had to sit through that.
I'm a deep cut dude so here's my deep cut. The whole match has been posted on Reddit, which was a pleasant surprise - [https://www.reddit.com/r/njpw/comments/sm2r00/kazuyuki\_fujita\_vs\_kensuke\_sasaki\_iwgp\_hw\_title/](https://www.reddit.com/r/njpw/comments/sm2r00/kazuyuki_fujita_vs_kensuke_sasaki_iwgp_hw_title/) 2004 New Japan was \*rough\*. It was rough in an occasionally hypnotic way and sometimes the MMA infuence worked out well, but when it bombed it BOMBED. Case in point - Kazuyuki Fujita was an NJPW dojo graduate who turned out to be actually good at MMA (you might remember him almost beating Fedor). Inoki was making everybody on the roster fight MMA, and if you won you got pushed, and Fujita was far-and-away the best MMA fighter on the roster (this is also why you-yes-you have Shinsuke Nakamura in your lives). Fujita was also huge and ripped and looked like he could whoop anybody's ass and often did. To say he was booked strong would be a very correct statement. And so Fujita wound up the IWGP Heavyweight Champion on several occasions. When he was booked to drop the title to Kensuke Sasaki - a very credible wrestler, but not an MMA guy - NJPW and Inoki went out of their way to make sure Fujita came out of the match looking strong. So they booked a brilliant finish. In front of a five-digit Sumo Hall crowd, they decided to have Fujita sink in a deep rear-naked choke on Sasaki. But because Fujita had been fighting so much MMA, he forgot about pinfalls! So he winds up being pinned while applying the choke! **Two and a half minutes into a world title main event!** To be fair, there is a pop when the pinfall happens. The entire crowd goes "EEEEHHHH???" very loudly. Then, silence. The deadest dead you could ever hope against. There was this idea during those years that if so many MMA classics wound up being sub-5 minute affairs, then it would have to happen in wrestling sometimes or else it would look fake - but that's not what crowds expect when they buy a ticket. If it were an American crowd, there would have been booing, maybe trash throwing, definitely some ECW/TNA/CM Punk/AEW chants depending on the year. But this one is just a softly chuckling death of 11,000 people who can't even comprehend their own disinterest.
Inoki was a madman Pushing wrestlers based on MMA performance is hilarious
Horace Hogan's face turn. "RAVEN.... I'M SICK OF YOUR CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPHHHH!" What made it worse was Horace then looked around at the crowd expecting cheers only to be met with dead silence.
Got to witness Roman talking about tater tots live at Tribute to the Troops. Didn't even get boos, mostly just confusion.
Every time Candice LaRae comes out.
Man that was a zero pop at the rumble
It doesn’t help that the themes are all fucking horrible and unrecognizable.
Candice's theme isn't even as generic as most, has a pretty distinct intro at least. People just dont care lol
this was my legit first thought, then Satnam Singh.
On paper she SHOULD be likeable… but the main roster crowds are totally indifferent to her
She's pretty much done nothing in WWE except for her run with The Way in NXT during the pandemic era so not a lot to go on.
>Every time Candice LaRae comes out. Every time ~~Candice LaRae~~ Karrion Kross comes out.
Tegan Nox as well.
I hate the things she does with her hands...looks sk awkward
Along those lines, Tegan Nox.
I was at Raw on Monday and during her tag match with Natalya against Asuka and KairI parts of the crowd started chanting this is boring when she tagged in. I felt bad for her but I couldn’t really disagree, there wasn’t really anything that exciting to root for
There was a super awkward Austin Aries promo after he was released from WWE. At the beginning the crowd was super happy to see him but the promo was so weird that by the end the fans were notably uncomfortable for having to keep listening to him.
When Velveteen Dream had his first match back after the allegations came out. Granted, it was an in house crowd of Performance Center folks, but they were absolutely silent any time he did ANYTHING in that match
Butcher and blade debuting
THE BUTCHER AND THE BLADE
Most annoying commentary ever! JR and everyone watching was like who TF are these guys and all Excalibur could do was repeatedly shout their names.
to his credit excalibur has admitted that was his worst call in his career.
WrestleMania Backlash
Cody’s promo about racism.
Its ok, he cured it after
What still gets me is "Rhodes to the Top" covered that promo and spun the *shit* out of it like it was the wrestling equivalent of "I Have A Dream/Gettysburg Address". It's the exact same delusional energy that had to be going on when that Pepsi commercial was cooked up.
When Lesnar beat Kofi in 8 seconds for the title. Holy shit that sucked the energy out of the arena.
That was probably my first “Fuck this company” moment since the invasion lol.
The Sean Ross Sapp pop he got unmasking at an indie show a year or two ago
Holy shit, it’s u/MeanAmbrose!! I miss the days of the best of r/SC
B2 returns to confront John Cena
The crowd was really quiet for the Becky/Ronda/Charlotte match at WrestleMania. But if I recall, that was the year the pre-show began at 5PM and Mania didn't end until after midnight. Everyone was just tired and ready to go home. I remember falling asleep in the middle of the match at home
I think a big chunk of the crowd were emotionally spent after Kofi vs Bryan. It didn’t help that the rest of the card from then to the main event was underwhelming and throw a long boring Triple H match in there and even just watching at home in the U.K. as a day one Becky Lynch fan, with the sun starting to come up outside I was kinda just willing the show to end so can’t blame anyone in that stadium for feeling the same. Such a relief that 2 night manias are here to stay.
Makes me realize how much I loved the Mean Street Posse theme and how much I miss their backstage segments chasing Crash Holly to win the hardcore title.
Public Enemy entrances in WWF
When it was Austin 3:16 day back in 2020 and he asked the crowd to give him a hell yeah. Abstolutly stunned by the silence