Bryan Danielson Says Vince McMahon Adjusted WWE Crowd Noise For Talent In Thunderdome

Pro wrestling companies had to quickly adapt and change the way they produced shows during the COVID-19 pandemic, with WWE using a specially-built venue called the ThunderDome to somewhat replicate a live audience. During that time, crowd noise was piped into the venue, which was controlled by the then WWE Chairman, Vince McMahon, whose idiosyncrasies came to the fore and were noticed by AEW star Bryan Danielson. 

Danielson recently appeared on "Fightful Wrestling," where he recalled pitching to the WWE creative team to move Damian Priest to the main roster and have him feud with Roman Reigns. He also revealed how McMahon would instruct WWE production staff to increase or decrease the volume of the piped-in crowd noise for specific wrestlers.

"But it's like, 'Oh, you could debut somebody.' And, like, I had pitched this really hard, and we actually brought him up from, I think he was living in Tampa at the time. He was part of the developmental system ... No, we were doing the Thunderdome in Tampa. He was living in Orlando. I thought, like, 'Let's debut Damian Priest right now. Let's have him come in because he's tall, he looks like a star, all this kind of stuff. Let's debut him against Roman,' and not in a match, but it's like this thing. And then let's hit the — because I saw Vince do this, and it was really weird. He was like, 'Okay, louder. I want the crowd noise louder for a certain wrestler. I want it louder.' And then other guys were out there, he goes, 'No, no, no. That's too loud. Quieter.' And I was like, 'Why would you ever make it quieter?'"

The AEW star called it a "fascinating time in wrestling" during the pandemic, a period when he geeked out over how wrestling companies pivoted and employed new strategies to keep audiences entertained.