Off-Air Raw Notes: Daniel Bryan's Crowd Noise Turned Down?, No Post-Raw Dark Match, More
I was able to attend Raw live last night in Cincinnati, and just finished watching the television broadcast. Here are some off-air notes from the show.
- Before the show there were at least four "New Day sucks" chants. Others included "Yes," "we want Ambrose," and "let's go Cena/Cena sucks." There was also a smattering of "woo" chants, something fans of the neighboring Cincinnati Reds have also adopted.
- Heath Slater vs. Kalisto and Stardust vs. R-Truth were the opening matches, which were both taped for Superstars. Truth and Kalisto both got good reactions, and the crowd was full of "Cody" chants.
- Eden announced that the show was going "live for Raw" at 8:45, which confused the fans. They were going to the USA Network cut-in that runs around that time.
- It seemed as if the crowd noise for Daniel Bryan was drastically turned down for his entrance. It was deafening in the arena. On TV, you could visibly see people chanting, but very little audio made it through.
- There was no post-Raw dark match. Instead, the hometown hero Dean Ambrose celebrated to end the show. He was getting chants all throughout the evening on-air and off-air.
- We weren't told that the Elimination Chamber PPV was added. There was no announcement, and fans didn't find out unless they happened to check online.
- A WrestleMania hype video was shown, and Ronda Rousey got the biggest pop of anyone featured in the video. A promo for Booker T's episode of WWE 24 also was shown, which got him a huge ovation.
- A lot of fans were surprised Adam Rose wasn't featured on the show after the ESPN documentary.
- Fans piled up near where Reigns makes his entrance in anticipation for him.
- The crowd obviously loved the Neville/Cena match. The crowd seemed like it would be much louder than it came across on television.
- A huge number of fans were Fandango-ing.
- The crowd was big in to Wyatt's entrance, but not as much for his promo. Encouraging the fans to use their cellphone lights during his entrance has removed the clapping effect from it.
- There was a Cincinnati Reds game next door, but you could tell that a lot of people filtered in because of the rain. The only empty seats were the side next to the hard camera, and there weren't very many at all.
- A lot of people were surprised WWE used pyro. They almost burned the building down in 2012 during a pyro test.
- There were a large number of fully-grown men in full-on Cena gear. You can't comprehend the amount of merchandise he sells until you're there. It never ceases to amaze. As noted, it wasn't just women and children wearing it.