I was looking forward to the debut of RAW on Netflix, because I hadn’t seen an episode of RAW in close to almost a decade, since my house had long since cut the cables, and I could usually keep up with the product solely on YouTube highlights or just catching the PPVs PLEs. Furthermore, being a monumental debut class of episode, I had expectations that the WWE was going to put their best foot forward and have a loaded show. If the Saturday Night’s Main Event revival they had a month ago was any indication to how they were going to treat special events, I thought the E was ready to pop off, and I was excited to see what was going to happen.
And of course, there was the whole curiosity of what the E was going to do on Netflix, as far as the freedom to push boundaries were going to be, since this isn’t cable television and they aren’t beholden to the television rating standards, I was curious to see what, if any, behavioral changes that were going to take place. However, they are still a publicly traded company, with collaborative programming still on cable television, so it wasn’t any surprise that they still kept it fairly PG, aside from The Rock saying ‘bullshit’ at one point.
Overall, the show was decent, but I’d be lying if I didn’t have all sorts of opinions and criticisms for it, mostly the fact that the episode was a little bit drowned in the pomp and celebration of the move to Netflix, with all sorts of appearances, cameos and segments that chewed up time, drug on a little bit, and most importantly, got in the way of actual wrestling product. The three-hour show had a total of four matches, and on paper they sounded good, but I don’t know what it was, but they were all pretty underwhelming in the grand spectrum of things.
The matches were sloppy and got sloppier as the night progressed, and honestly a Seth Rollins vs. CM Punk match could have been on a Wrestlemania card without anyone questioning it, but as far as I’m concerned it was the worst match of the night for the RAW is Netflix debut. I don’t know whether their personal beefs interfered with their ability to do business, or if there were any subtle instances of trying to sabotage one another, but the whole match was kind of clunky, and I felt like it was a good example of two talented guys that just didn’t click in the ring.
It’s like the talent caved into the magnitude of the scenario, which is funny considering all of these specific performers have worked multiple Wrestlemanias among other big shows at this point, and those shows are usually two to three times the size of this episode of RAW.
But the biggest thing in my opinion was the fact that the crowd was absolutely dead as fuck. This was something my bros and I discussed in our group chat during the show, but my consensus was that the crowd was a dead crowd, and I always believe that performers really can feed off of the fans, and hot crowds can really inspire stalwart performances, and since the RAW is Netflix show was held in Los Angeles, primarily full of people who just wanted to there for the hot ticket, but not really because they’re actual wrestling fans, it led to an arena that was full, but full of mostly casuals who don’t know the nuances of a show, intricacies of existing storylines, or have any genuine fandom for any of the workers. This was an event, and casuals want to be seen at events, and actual wrestling fans that feed a show their energy, weren’t there, be it being priced out or simply incapable of getting in because of the fairweather scenesters were boxing them all out.
Sure, guys like The Rock and John Cena got some big reactions. Roman Reigns got a decent pop, as did Rhea Ripley, Seth Rollins and CM Punk. Jey Uso didn’t get the raucous reaction that he normally has been getting, as the most over guy in the company currently. Dominic Mysterio and the New Day, who have been getting absolutely drowned out by boos and heat in the last few months, I’m convinced had to have boos piped into the arena because of how lukewarm the dead crowd was.
It’s like the people in attendance had it in them to have initial reactions to everything they saw, but by and large were sitting on their hands for the remainder of every segment, reacting to big spots and probably whatever the actual fans dispersed throughout the arena were reacting to and going along with it. It was almost like watching a New Japan show, by how non-plussed the fans were, except whereas the Japanese chalk it up to cultural meekness and lack of expression, the LA scenesters were dead because they’re not really wrestling fans as much as they wanted to be at a big event so they could boast about it on social media.
I get it, it was important for the E to put their best foot forward, have it in LA and pack it with as many execs, celebrities and people who might actually gain more exposure, but in the process, they priced and pushed out actual fans from attending and it led to a dead crowd that didn’t help the general uninspired performing from the workers on the card. Wrestlemanias and big shows get away with celeb-stacking and posturing, because they’re held at giant venues where the majority of the audience can still be actual fans, but the dinky Intuit Dome with their capacity of like 16,000, had the majority of the attendance being casuals and/or scenesters, and it was painfully obvious.
However, if there was one segment where the crowd woke up and came to life that truly stood out, was when Hulk Hogan made his appearance and was absolutely booed the fuck out of the building. It was like the fans were told that they had a finite amount of booing that they were allowed to do, and they passed on using any of it on Dom Mysterio or The New Day and absolutely unloaded on Hulk Hogan. Unsurprisingly, this was my most notable and entertaining moment of the evening where the most emotion was elicited from me, in the form of laughter.
The funniest part about it all was that how out of touch Hulk Hogan is with the world and the current state of the industry, is that he stood there, somehow surprised that a California crowd was booing him into oblivion when just less than three months ago, he was ripping his shirt and cutting a cringeworthy promo in support of the orange turd prior to the election. Poor Jimmy Hart standing there with his longtime friend, waving Old Glory, complicit by association, taking tons of shrapnel. And then Hogan just goes straight into his babyface promo, putting over Netflix, putting over his beer company, and putting over the company, while everyone is still just booing the fuck out of him.
The power of a crowd when they get hot!
Take all the pomp and circumstance, and the whole Netflix narrative out of the night, and this was an extremely mediocre show. The matches were average at best, the crowd was dead as fuck, and not even all the special appearances did much for me. A tremendous amount of time was spent on showing off celebrities and speaking segments, and in true first-world wrestling smark problems, the lack of formal commercial breaks really cramped my style of multitasking while watching wrestling like I used to.
The good news is that whether it was intentional or not, the RAW on Netflix bar has been set at not a tremendously high level, and the brand can only go upward from here, and the sky’s the limit. I’m sure once the novelty of being on Netflix wears out, and regular fans are allowed to start going back to the shows, business will get back to normal, and as far as the E is concerned, that’s probably exactly where they want to be.