By: Noah Trombley
The Triple H era of WWE truly began this week as the game’s influence on the Monday Night Raw program was very clear from the get go. This episode of the Monday night staple was such a breath of fresh air as many of the annoying habits and booking decisions that Vince had used throughout his many years running the ship seem to be non-existent. Storylines seemed to be treated with care and given reasons to exist, champions were made to look like a huge deal, and most importantly there was plenty of wrestling on the show. That seems weird to say out loud but one of the most prevalent criticisms of Vince McMahon’s WWE, especially on a weekly programming front, was that there wasn’t enough wrestling on the shows. This week had no such issues as we had 6 matches on this week’s show that all went over at least 12 mins. In the case of the Bianca Belair vs Iyo Sky match, they put on a 20 minute banger of a match while lower on the card we got another amazing match consisting of Seth Rollins vs Montez Ford. This was such an amazing turn around from just a week ago, we actually had a 3 hour wrestling show where wrestling was the focus of the show.
With that being said however there was one thing that happened, or didn’t happen, during this week’s Raw which brought the whole show down. Raw this week emanated from the Toyota Center in Houston Texas, and let’s just say WWE should not return to the Houston area for a while. The entire show had amazing matches, amazing promos from the likes of Edge, and the continuation of some of the year’s best storylines. However, this Houston crowd seemed like they couldn’t care less about what was going on in the ring or backstage. No matter what the performers did the crowd remained deadly quiet throughout the entire night. The near falls that Bianca and Iyo were getting on each other barely received any kind of reaction, you could’ve put crickets in this crowd and they would have been louder than the people in the arena. This just baffles me as why would you pay your hard earned money to go to a show like WWE, where crowd participation is almost as important as the performers themselves, and just sit on your hands all night. There were entire sections of the crowd just sitting there motionless while the main event of the Usos vs the Mysterios for the Undisputed Tag Team Championships raged on. This took so much out of the show as watching it on TV you couldn’t help but notice how the crowd seemed to not care at all with wah
This crowd seemed to not respect these performers working their butts off to give them an amazing show with some amazing action. It seriously was a show of disrespect by this crowd. WWE should not put up with this lack of crowd participation. If this show was in Chicago, New York, Atlanta, anywhere else the crowd would’ve gone nuts at the action on display this night. Compare the reactions on Raw to the opening match of last week’s Smackdown which saw Drew Mcintyre vs Sheamus for a shot at the WWE Undisputed Universal Championship and you will see just how disappointing this Houston crowd was. WWE should seriously send a message to the city of Houston and not return for a while to show that if they want another show again they are going to have to show up and be a raucous crowd and appreciate what these performers are giving them.
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