It's not just about cost though, the picture clarity is so much better now. You used to think you were missing something by watching from home. Now you feel like you are missing things when you watch live.

Me about smart phones and social media:




That could be relevant but anecdotally Ive never had that concern, outside of football

Baseball attendance is actually up compared to 2000 so it isn't people staying at home to watch.

Also, I've watched some random baseball games from the 80s lately and the crowds aren't more rowdy or louder than today.

Hm maybe its just the 90s were GOAT for sports?

re: pricing

Falcons released their pricing for food and beverages. It's gonna be like 2-5 bucks for everything. Awesome.

To be fair to today's crowds, the crowd was relatively hot for the AJ/Roman tag match on Raw last week. I don't actually recall seeing a crowd that into a match in a while.

I basically retired from going to live sporting events. Tailgating for NFL games can be a blast but there's nothing better than sitting on your couch and degening on redZone for 10 hours.

yeah, I used to go to a lot of sporting events and haven't been to more than a couple in the last few years. i know for mania and nxt dallas I went to buy tickets, saw the price, and then decided to just spend 9.99 for both and stream it instead while kicking back in my own chair.

Yep, being away from my home teams, the only time I ever shell out for live games is when the Giants visit the Mariners every three years and I get primo seats. Other than that I take my son to the ball game and sit mid upper deck or in the bleachers and basically use it as an excuse to enjoy the day and pig out on ballpark food.

Sounds like George The Animal Steele isn't doing too well. Posted something a serious health issue.

For kicks yesterday, I pulled up a Smackdown I attended in the fall of 2000 in Louisville, KY. Amazing how in those early years that SD was leveraged to actually play a big role in story development and continuation from Raw--well beyond the lazy holeonaminunt playa tag team matches we've grown to expect in recent years.

Those present at that show: The Rock, Edge and Christian, Kurt Angle, HHH, Kane, Eddie Guerrero, Undertaker, Jericho, and Chris Benoit to name a few. For a "B" show it sure didn't feel like it.

I also loved the "barroom brawl" between the Acolytes and the Dudleys at the Have a Nice Day Cafe--a 70s themed chain bar I spent a fair amount of time at in my early 20s.

The 24 for Seth Rollins was really good. Here are the last four minutes (a summary of the show): https://streamable.com/f8zf

If they expect people to boo Seth after seeing that special they have completely lost it. Sometimes I wonder if they actually are trying to get people to root for the heels now, because they can't get them to root for the faces they pick. Live audiences watching live wrestling performances aren't like the audiences at a movie theatre; for the most part they want the person who they think is really a great performer and decent and deserving to win the matches, and that trumps whatever happens in storyline when they aren't congruent.

that special was awesome

absolute travesty that they are so hellbent on stifling any cheers for not roman that they'll make seth a heel after that. dude could legit be the most over person in a decade if they'd let him with his combination of personality (again, special was awesome) for one part of the crowd and his actual talent for the other part. I say in a decade more due to Bryans injury cutting it short once he really started to get mainstream attention (yes chants were happening in sporting arenas ffs).

The next 24/7 is going to show Kevin Owens doing charity work.

I've been watching the old 1987 prime time shows. The crowds back then went nuts over the smallest stuff, which is a testament to storytelling and condition. Very impressive, assuming the network isn't adding crowd noise or something.

Edit to add, Heenan and Monsoon were so great. Plus, obviously, Ventura. Amazing how much better the announcers/corollary characters were, and how much they added to the show.

I love the kayfabe everyone has. It's great to hear about monsoon wanting to know Andre's training secrets, or Ventura talking about match strategy and winner's purses.

The huge and obviously manufactured pop for Greg "The Babyface" Valentine in this clip indicates to me that canned reactions were alive and well in the Golden Era as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCR66g5wK6U

But certainly the crowd was far more engaged in more than just sing-along back then.

Plus, these dudes are all jacked to the gills. They all have an upper body like their father was a buffalo.

Watch something from the 70's and see the reaction whenever Bruno lands a punch. I think a big part of it is they didn't have 5 hours of programming where they saw all these guys fight every week. They actually had to go to the arena or wait a few weeks until the match might air on cable.

They also didn't have companies beating them over the head with a constant message of "you guys know this isn't real, right?" I don't know what percentage of 70s crowds actually thought wrestling to be a shoot, but certainly at that point companies were still allowing the audience to try to suspend disbelief and immerse themselves even if they knew better.

In terms of something they could still do today, a big reason why wrestling crowds reacted to everything then is that everything had a chance to matter. For example, if someone is working the leg, the match may end because of that leg injury (e.g. the leg gives out when they try to do a move), and that wrestler may even miss significant time being out with an injury. Now they generally don't even sell a worked over leg while doing their signature moves. Nothing matters except the pins and near falls after finishers (including the super distraction finisher), so the crowd doesn't care about anything but the near falls.

Many of today's wrestlers are pretty big too. Big E and Brock, in particular, have massive upper bodies.

The news that everyone has been waiting for--Season 2 of Swerved debuts tonight after Raw. All 9 episodes.

As a famous commentator once said, "That'll put a lot of butts in seats."

Because of the LAW radio review-a-wai podcast I watched the episodes of nitro where hall and then Nash debuted. It was so genius and brave compared to now modern promotions work. When hall came out they treated it as totally legit, and the next episode completely no sold it; never even acknowledged it happened.

So amazing compared to today's Wwe, where they face the stupid Mountain Dew black bottles in the announcers table so we can be implicitly told JBL is chugging the dew while he broadcasts.

One good aspect of Bischoff was that he would try to do something every once in awhile that would really have fans doubting whether or not what was happening was real. People might think that is ridiculous, yet several people actually thought Vince McMahon was arrested last year. Several people in WCW focus groups actually thought Goldberg was real or might be real even though they knew the rest was fake; and these were people who were 18-30, not kids or the elderly.