My plans changed so I ended up watching last night. It was okay. Every time the internet is full of "worst PPV ever" posts but they usually don't mean much. I missed the Balor, B-Team and Asuka matches because I wasn't sure of the start time. Some of the show was better entertainment than it was "good matches" but that's a big part of the game anyway. The B-Team was hilarious on the post-show.
One thing I found really interesting though. Lots of complaints about the silly chanting in the iron man match, and it did detract from the match. That stuff was funny at the rumble, but it should stay there. But the fans weren't doing that because they hated the match or were disinterested. They were watching everything and doing at least some of the usual crowd involvement, cheering on Seth and whatnot, but they were also doing the silly buzzer chants as well. I assume somebody started it, somebody else thought it was funny, and crowd-psychology took over.
Yet just a bit earlier, the crowd WAS trying to ruin a match with their chanting and booing. A match they had no interest in at all. A match they wanted to be terrible and a complete failure. Between two men they didn't want to see. And yet those guys somehow took over, reeled the crowd in and made them watch the match. At first, the crowd was fighting against it... they would get into the match for a few moments and then realize they were supposed to hate it and start being unruly again and chanting for beach balls. But by the end, they weren't doing any of that stuff. The last portion of the match seemed like any other big match with the fans eating up everything that happened.
So why is it that a match people actively want to ruin managed to engage the crowd, and one that they were more interested in(and strongly support at least one of the participants) could not? I suppose people's general apathy about Ziggler made it a bit less hyped pre-match, even though he's usually good inside the ring. Yes, the countdown chants were stupid and detracted from the match. WWE made it even worse when they tried to fight against it by hiding the clock from the audience. It was probably doomed the moment they made that stupid decision. When has hiding candy a child already knows is there stopped them whining about wanting candy? I think Rollins at one point said "it's worse now than when the clock was there!" But at some point you need to stop being annoyed that the crowd is goofing around and give them something more amusing to take their attention back, and I guess they just didn't manage to do that. Even though the giant charisma vacuum of Lashley-Reigns was able to do so to a much more hostile crowd.
I wonder if part of it is just that Roman knows that his matches will always get booed and get "go away" type chants, so the wrestlers are better able to just ignore it and do their thing. But for a Reigns match to win the crowd back is still a pretty rare thing. Didn't hurt that that was a much better match than the last couple I've seen with him.
