I’ve been completely slammed at work, so I haven’t really had much of a chance to write about my thoughts about the grandest show of them all™, but on the other hand, with the entire week now behind us, I’ve had more time to play catch up with everything from the pre-pre show (NXT TakeOver), the pre-show, the entire five-hour clusterfuck that was Wrestlemania itself, highlights from both the following Raw and Smackdown, as well as the first NXT show post-Mania.
Needless to say, I have opinions on all of it, otherwise this post wouldn’t exist.
It goes without question that NXT TakeOver: New Orleans was the clear superior show over the last week, and I’m really beginning to question the WWE’s methodology of pairing TakeOvers with the big four PPVs of the year. According to multiple sources (wrestling personality autobiographies), it’s been stated that Vince McMahon himself and his production team have this idea that crowds have a finite number of “pops” AKA crowd reactions per night, and that certain wrestlers have been discouraged from saying certain things or doing certain moves that would elicit a pop at a point of the show that would be one less pop for during the main event.
Although the terminology is kind of silly, there’s no denying the idea that crowds do have finite amounts of energy, and that it is entirely possible to burnout a crowd with shows that go too long, or there simply being too many shows to catch. That being said, all of the aforementioned shows occurred in the same two venues within New Orleans, and sure thousands of people converge on a city whenever Wrestlemania is in town, but it’s safe to assume that the same people are often times the ones hitting up all of the shows all week long. I love wrestling as much as the next smark does, but I for one have zero desire to go to that many shows in a week. Give me TakeOver, and I’ll be content to watch the rest of the programs on my projector from the comfort of my cushy leather recliner.
Back to the point, I think WWE isn’t maximizing their pop potential by pairing TakeOvers with the big four shows of the year; if anything at all, it’s almost counterproductive to the logic of burning out crowds, especially when the facts have been that the NXT roster has been routinely outperforming their main roster counterparts for the better part of the last two years now.