It seems I am taking my stepson and the gang to WWE Friday Night Smackdown this week. Tickets were $50, by the way.
Any idea how long such a show lasts? It starts at 7.45.
Around the bell time, they may have one or two dark (I.e. untelevized) matches to warm up the crowd. These usually feature an undercard wrestler or someone from NXT (WWE’s developmental league), and are usually a squash match where the featured wrestler quickly beats another undercard guy or a local indy wrestler who’s being paid $500 to do a job for the night.
The part of the show that airs live on TV as Smackdown starts promptly at 8 PM and runs for two hours. After that, they do “205 Live”, the cruiserweight division show, which is somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour long and also airs live. After that, they’ll do a dark main event, which usually features one of the current champions defending their title in a match which they invariably win because title changes don’t happen in unaired matches except under very unusual circumstances (e.g. the champ has just failed a drug test and has to drop the belt before they get a 30-day suspension) unless the champ is a bad guy, in which case it’ll be a non-title match where the good guy wins to send the crowd home happy.
All told, the show will probably wrap up sometime between 11 and 11:30.
Thank you. Now what color should I dye my beard?
When my son was 8(?) he was into wrestling, so I bought tickets and took him to a show. My biggest surprise was the crowd. I expected people like me, taking their kids. In reality it was mostly adults, some with poster-board signs.
Neon pink, of course.
A note to the OP, in case he’s not familiar with modern-day pro wrestling; it’s very much an audience participation event at this point. The crowd can and will, and is outright encouraged to, chant along with the events happening in the ring in support/opposition of the things that are happening.
Common chants are “This is awesome! (clap clap clap-clap-clap)” if you’re enjoying what you’re seeing, “Fight forever! (clap clap clap-clap-clap)” if the match is so good that you don’t want it to end, “Bulllshit!” if you don’t like what you’re seeing, “Yay! Boo!” if the good guy and the bad guy are trading punches, “Holy shit!” if someone pulls off a particularly impressive move, or “You fucked up!” if someone messes up a move that should have been impressive.
Feel free to come up with your own or otherwise heckle the wrestlers as you like. If you don’t know what to do, just follow the crowd.
So, how was the show?
when I first went to WWF and WCW cards in the late 80s to the mid 90s was the biggest thing is back then they didn’t have the big screens showing all the backstage stuff so you only were getting half the card … also there’s no announcer so you have to figure out what’s going on …
I went to the Halloween havoc in vegas when the “dark” sting angle started and no one knew what was going on until we watched the PPV replay …
Loud, so loud that I had to retreat to the hallway outside. The $14 cheesesteak was the worst I ever had. Just as bad was that it was so filling that I was unable to try anything else. The stores selling Flyers merch were only selling WWF stuff.
So my stepson and his posse had a good time, but they decided to leave a bit early to avoid the traffic.
Great, fun and friendly crowd. Many Muslims in full garb, WWF is huge in the Arab world.
I am glad I went. I doubt I will go again.