The wrestling bloggers and podcasters tell you that Mercedes Mone is so not over that AEW has to pipe in sound to make it seem like live crowds are chanting her “CEO” nickname.
Verdict: False, based on the reaction of the live crowd at the Chartway Arena in Norfolk on Wednesday.
One thing that’s true: the crowds aren’t what they used to be.
WrestleTix hasn’t published a final update yet, but as of a couple of hours before the show, the number of tickets distributed was 3,068; for reference, the first AEW “Dynamite” show at the Chartway Arena, back in 2021, drew 4,863.
I don’t know, based on just looking around the arena, which had large areas of seats taped over, and plenty of empties in the areas that weren’t taped over, that we’re going to get much more than the 3,000 to 3,100 that the final pre-show report from WrestleTix pegged.
If that holds, that would be a decrease in the range of 35 percent from the first show back in 2021 to last night.
More observations
About Mercedes Mone: yeah, she’s over
Our group got to our seats Row B opposite the entrance ramp around 7 p.m., an hour before the show went live on TBS at 8 p.m. ET.
There were already “CEO” chants rising out of the fans who were settling in, along with “Whose house? Swerve’s house” and “Woo-o-o-o!”
You can’t attend a live pro wrestling event in North America without a ton of the “Woo-o-o-o!” echoing throughout the building.
We’re told by the bloggers and podcasters that Mone gets go-home heat. That’s not what I saw or heard last night from the Norfolk fanbase.
Note to Tony Khan: Live crowds expect certain things
No MJF or Will Ospreay for us live in the arena last night.
We got an Acclaimed match, but no Max Caster rap, because The Acclaimed attacked The Young Bucks on the way to the ring for the tag title match.
Darby Allin got a couple of seconds of entrance music and video before being attacked by Jack Perry.
The new (awful) Chris Jericho “Learning Tree” gimmick means no more “Judas.”
People who buy tickets expect certain things. AEW fans want to cheer, then boo, MJF, they want to hear Max Caster incorporate something local and something political into a freestyle diss, they want to be able to sing along to an entrance song or two.
I look at the past month of “Dynamite” shows, and Little Rock, Ark., got a 60-minute match between MJF and Ospreay, Nashville got a “Blood & Guts,” and we got … Wheeler Yuta in the main event against Swerve Strickland.
The empties
I’ll give whoever Tony Khan has in charge of making sure there are enough people sitting in the seats that are on camera, because I imagine that it looked good on TV.
It didn’t look good in the arena.
The hard-cam section was about half-full, with the area to the right of the entrance ramp – where my tickets were for the 2021 show – taped off.
There was a big area in Section 101, one section over from me, facing directly into the entrance ramp and video screen, also taped off.
I mean, hey, there were more people at the AEW show in Norfolk last night than there were in Asheville, N.C., for the Donald Trump campaign rally.
That’s a low bar.
Quick hits
-
Photo: Chris Graham/AFP Once again, there was one, and only one, merch stand. Five years in, I would have expected Khan to have thought that one through a little better. People who go to a live show want to take something home with them. They don’t want to stand in line for an hour for the privilege of being able to give you money.
- Signs look good on TV, but they’re annoying for people behind the people holding them up. And I was sitting, again, opposite the stage and video screen, which is to say, that one guy holding a sign over his head for every ring entrance and run-in was never going to be on TV. I didn’t pay good money to look at the back of a mark’s sign whenever anything half-interesting was going on.
- Diverse crowd. The senior couple in front of us, adorable – the wife, a grandmother, said she grew up in the Phillippines without a TV, and watched wrestling shows by standing on a chair to look through the neighbors’ window. The ladies behind us were ogling the wrestlers and commenting loudly on their preferences (overheard: “I want to be part of that man sandwich”). The dudes two rows back were your typical AEW smartmarks, maintaining a running conversation on how Matt and Nick Jackson are wrestling geniuses, and WWE fans are garbage.
Share
Chris Graham
