Fans in attendance at the Barclays Center for Raw thought it would be a great idea to have a little bit too much fun and bring some toys. So they brought out beach balls and started bouncing them around like they were at a rock show.
“We want beach balls,” chants were abundant during the Finn Balor vs. Jason Jordan match, and the lack of attention to the match was evident. People were cheering and booing out of place with the match because they were paying attention to the beach balls.
Security reportedly had to toss a few people out of the building which caused boos where they shouldn’t have been during the match. So if someone was watching wrestling for the first time, unless they had someone explain it to them that it’s not always like this and these fans are just still pumped from SummerSlam they’d be very confused.
As entertaining as it might be for the fans it has to be very frustrating to WWE. Road Dogg commented about the beach ball issue, but he better watch out. Because unless WWE can jump on them before they’re blown up, SmackDown Live might very well have a beach ball infestation at the Barclays as well.
Finn Balor might be popular but NY crowd would rather throw beach ball around & making security chase over watching his match #RAW
— Justin LaBar (@JustinLaBar) August 22, 2017
Disrespect at its core. Not just to Finn, to all the talent.
— Brian G. James (@BrianRDJames) August 22, 2017
“It was a freaking disaster. I don’t know what the exact number was I’ve had people in the building tell me from 7 to 9 to 10 beach balls that were out at different points in the match,” Dave Meltzer said to co-host Bryan Alvarez on Wrestling Observer Radio
“And then the worst thing that they did was in the match between Jason Jordan and Finn Balor — they were working through the beach ball thing and you could tell there were beach balls and the fans were chanting for beach balls while those guys were out there trying to do a good match and they were doing a good match to no audience response. The audience not paying attention to them which is really kinda a bad thing to do. Probably why Cesaro got so upset yesterday.”
“And then the main event goes on between Roman Reigns, The Miz and Samoa Joe and Cena really played to it like ‘hey they’re having a good time’ and I was shocked when they shot the crowd and showed the beach ball because now they’ve told people it’s cool to bring beach balls to the thing and that’s like the “what?” chant and things like that […] you tell them it’s cool not to watch the match and take over the show.”
Meltzer went on to say WWE shouldn’t have shown the beach ball on TV because it will give people the impression it’s okay to play with a beach ball instead of paying attention to what’s going on in the ring. But seriously, if you’re a fan at one of these shows and a beach ball pops up just ignore the beach ball when there is a professional wrestling match happening in front of you.
It will hurt the product when all people see on television is a crowd getting into something other than the match in front of them.
Dave said when he saw WWE take a shot of the beach ball in the crowd on live television he said to himself “Oh my god this is something WCW would do. They’re not thinking on their feet, they’re not thinking to the future.”
Ouch. You might want to leave the beach balls in the swimming pool guys.
If you use any of the quotes in this article please credit Wrestling Observer Radio with a H/T to Still Real To Us for the transcription.
