NXT fans, calm the chanting

[Jeff Deliverer of Mail]

Don't get me wrong, NXT fans are the most energetic fans I've seen since old ECW days. But for the love of god, we don't need a chant every 1 minute.

I'm watching Nakamura vs Sami at Takeover and the match is barely 4 minutes in and we are deep into our 15th goddamn chant change, it's just stupid. Nakamuras entrance spawned at least 6 different chants including Holy Shit.

I think -This is awesome- has been misused about 5 times and it's only three matches in.

Great energy fans, keep the dumb chanting out though.

 

[AhSpicyDrop]

You're not taking into consideration that the vast majority of people in attendance last night were fans from all over the world for Wrestlemania, many being die-hard wrestling fans. Most probably getting to see Nakamura in person for the first time...

That being said the NXT do tend to go a little overboard with the chants.. but I'd rather a crowd be super into something and amp up the atmosphere as opposed to a crowd bored to death and chanting 'boring' or find other ways to take away from the matches. It's a fine line... but considering the crowd that was on hand last night it was perfectly acceptable... The matches leading up to Nakamura and Zayn were all fire too, so the crowd was pumped anyway.

 

[The Brain]

I agree. I don't want to take away from the fans' fun and I do love the energy but some of the chants are annoying. I don't mind that they are chanting as much as what they're chanting. Not everything is awesome. Much of the things they chant 'this is awesome' for I find rather ordinary. Many things they chant 'holy shit' at aren't 'holy shit' moments. And what about '....'s gonna kill you.' I thought that was for Samoa Joe. I've heard others get that chant recently. If you start a chant or catchphrase for someone keep it unique to that person. The one that really bugged me last night was the 'botchmania' chant. Yeah, it's harmless fun but that's pretty disrespectful, and not in an 'aaassshole' or 'you suck' kind of way. It's still better than stupid fans chanting completely random things like 'Randy Savage' or 'JBL' for no reason at all.

 

[bjarvis]

And you're going to get it on Monday Night Raw as well.

WrestleMania weekend, especially since the inception of NXT, has become a smark event where they can be heard (unlike in the larger 60k+ arenas).

 

[JoeFromTomsRiver]

Don't be jealous because they got watch that awesome show in person and you didn't. That's what this is about. The chants add to the atmosphere and it's never going stop at these sorts of events where it's die-hard fans.

 

[Spidey Revivey]

"Hey Bailey" is one of the best crowd chants I've ever heard and it did my heart good hearing it on Takeover. But the "Asuka/Joe is Gonna Kill You" was a little uncreative and took part of it away for me. That and the crowd was the worst part of Zayn vs. Nakamura when they should've been the icing on the cake. So I definitely see what you mean. Tuning out the crowd shouldn't be a struggle for the viewers at home.

But eh. That's legit the only gripe I can see with the PPV, which was phenomenal. It didn't bother me and if I was there live, it would probably have made my experience all the better. There's a dissention with TV vs live viewing and that's one of them. Gotta take the pros with the cons.

 

[Good Golly It's Ollie]

Most of them are good, if overdone, only a couple of them are particularly obnoxious. I for one have never liked "You Fucked Up". But on the whole, it's much better an invested circle-jerky crowd than the alternative.

I lolled at what I think was a "Holy Smokes" chant for Bayley though, thought it was cute. No bad language in front of the cinnamon.

Singing for Sami's theme is awesome, I will write an angry letter to WWE if they ever change his music from this point.

 

[Azane]

Meh, I'd take the over chanting and such anyday over RAW's dead crowds where they only chant when someone forces them into it.

the chants keep me interesting, even during matches I might find boring other times.

Oh, and "BAYLEYS going to HUG you" gets me everytime, even if its overdone.

 

[king4day]

Meh, I'd take the over chanting and such anyday over RAW's dead crowds where they only chant when someone forces them into it.

the chants keep me interesting, even during matches I might find boring other times.

Oh, and "BAYLEYS going to HUG you" gets me everytime, even if its overdone.

This, exactly.
Yes, some of the chants are bad, but as a now casual fan, I NEED to hear the crowd into it. That makes me more focused on the match.
It's no longer the attitude era where the roof would blow off the building when big moments happen.

It's necessary to have it. Telling them to shut up is telling HHH to just shut down NXT and move everyone to the main roster.
That crowd and the wrestling (including moves you don't see from guys on the main roster) is what differentiates NXT from the main roster.

 

[lenguy]

The NXT crowd brings a great presence, they bring high levels of energy an enthusiasm to the events. They want to feel as much as part of the show as the actual event and I see nothing wrong with that. They are all having a good time and displaying their passion and excitement through various chants. Last night for example, they were hot throughout the Sami Zayn and Shinsuke Nakamura match. That's how into it they were. They were enjoying themselves to the absolute fullest. If I was there among that crowd, I would be right there alone with them. You can't just block out that vibe and energy. To me, the crowd was just as big a part of that match as Zayn and Nakamura were. It adds to the atmosphere and makes the match that much more memorable.

Now, that being said, a crowd full of energy that brings out a good vibe is great. A crowd that's disrespectful to the craft and tries to "Hijack" the show are the crowds I hate. A lot of those smark venue's like Chicago, New York/Brooklyn among other's are notorious for this. The one's that just chant various things to get attention to themselves. They chant "we are Awesome" and will do that stupid wave thing. They'll randomly chant for the announcers of random people in the crowds and do various amount of disrespectful things just to bring attention to themselves. I hate those kind of crowds. Look, I get it, some times the product just isn't entertaining and you might find yourself a bit bored. For me though, those kind of crowd reactions are just highly irritating and infuriate me a great deal. At least the NXT crowd feeds off the show and each other and don't deliberately try to take it over just to try to please themselves.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

The NXT crowd brings a great presence, they bring high levels of energy an enthusiasm to the events. They want to feel as much as part of the show as the actual event and I see nothing wrong with that. They are all having a good time and displaying their passion and excitement through various chants. Last night for example, they were hot throughout the Sami Zayn and Shinsuke Nakamura match. That's how into it they were. They were enjoying themselves to the absolute fullest. If I was there among that crowd, I would be right there alone with them. You can't just block out that vibe and energy. To me, the crowd was just as big a part of that match as Zayn and Nakamura were. It adds to the atmosphere and makes the match that much more memorable.

Now, that being said, a crowd full of energy that brings out a good vibe is great. A crowd that's disrespectful to the craft and tries to "Hijack" the show are the crowds I hate. A lot of those smark venue's like Chicago, New York/Brooklyn among other's are notorious for this. The one's that just chant various things to get attention to themselves. They chant "we are Awesome" and will do that stupid wave thing. They'll randomly chant for the announcers of random people in the crowds and do various amount of disrespectful things just to bring attention to themselves. I hate those kind of crowds. Look, I get it, some times the product just isn't entertaining and you might find yourself a bit bored. For me though, those kind of crowd reactions are just highly irritating and infuriate me a great deal. At least the NXT crowd feeds off the show and each other and don't deliberately try to take it over just to try to please themselves.

This is pretty much how I feel about it. There are crowds that are sometimes at shows to genuinely have a good time though, to be fair, just because a crowd doesn't repeatedly chant for everything that happens doesn't mean they're not having fun. However, there are definitely crowds, sometimes, that genuinely seem to be there just so they can crap all over the show, draw attention to themselves, disrespect the wrestlers and generally be obnoxious. For instance, a fan assaulted Braun Strowman on Raw a few weeks back and that's part of this "I paid my money so I can do whatever I want" mentality that too many fans have these days.

I enjoy energetic crowds, as everyone else does, and being part of energetic crowds, there are times when it's too much and becomes just a lot of noise and this goes for crowds at any wrestling show put on by any company. When you have people who start chanting "This Is Awesome" a dozen times during the match or every time someone does a high spot, it can get irritating. The only time I really got annoyed was during the various chants during the main event at TakeOver last night. I mean, WWE has gotten grief in years past, and rightly so, for turning a blind eye to the injuries of talent, so it's hard to blame the medical staff for being as sure as they could that Samoa Joe's injury wasn't serious. It was bleeding pretty heavily and, for all they could tell for a bit, Joe's eye itself could have been cut. If Joe had been cut on the forehead in what would look like to be a classic blading cut, then I'd definitely understand the frustration but that wasn't the case with Joe being legitimately cut open last night around his right eye.

 

[MyndZero]

This is the stupidest thing I'll never understand about some wrestling fans.

You want them to NOT chant? The crowd are apart of the show, otherwise they would be inside an empty arena or room doing their thing, and it would be boring as fuck to watch because the crowd plays a big part in adding that magic to wrestling, afterall wrestlers try to get a reaction out of a crowd, they wouldn't know if they are succeeding with what there doing or if there doing something horribly wrong with no crowd.

That said, the solution is simple for you. Watch RAW, or Smackdown if you want some fake crowd reactions to lighten the mood a bit for you. I love NXT with their crowd reactions, and I would NEVER change it.

 

[George Steele's Barber]

"This thread is awesome!" Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap.

I get where the OP is coming from. It is a bit much some of the time. The chants seem incredibly disingenuous at times. I start to wonder if there are people more focused on what they want to chant then the show itself. Fortunately for me I'm pretty good at blocking our the crowd and commentary. I'm not sure if I was at a show if I would be as tolerant of some of the ridiculous timing and opinions of the vocal crowd.

Plus where are these chants coming from? Is it one person or a small group starting them. I started a thread a couple of years ago that WWE should consider starting a Twitter account that pretends to be a fan account to tell people what to chant or place plants in the audience that starts this kind of stuff. I doubt that is what is going on but again there just feels like an edge of disingenuousness to the chanting. Although I do agree that it is mostly more entertaining than a lackluster crowd.

"I'm going to sleep now!" Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap.

 

[The Samoan Heritage]

Now, that being said, a crowd full of energy that brings out a good vibe is great. A crowd that's disrespectful to the craft and tries to "Hijack" the show are the crowds I hate. A lot of those smark venue's like Chicago, New York/Brooklyn among other's are notorious for this. The one's that just chant various things to get attention to themselves. They chant "we are Awesome" and will do that stupid wave thing. They'll randomly chant for the announcers of random people in the crowds and do various amount of disrespectful things just to bring attention to themselves. I hate those kind of crowds. Look, I get it, some times the product just isn't entertaining and you might find yourself a bit bored. For me though, those kind of crowd reactions are just highly irritating and infuriate me a great deal. At least the NXT crowd feeds off the show and each other and don't deliberately try to take it over just to try to please themselves.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I can't believe there were people last night that were actually angry at the fans in attendance. The fans were engaged the entire night and not once tried to be "smarks" about it. The only bad chant from last night was the "botchamania" chant which was really harmless fun and only lasted 1 or 2 seconds. Also there was an small disagreement in my viewing party rather the crowd was chanting "let Joe bleed" or "let Joe breathe" during the main event. I personally thought that they should've did some big spot that would've had Joe and Balor seperated for a while...But now that I think of it they sort of did, but for some reason while Balor was in the crowd no one really tried to take that time to check Joe out. Which may have lead to the crowd getting angry when they stop the action in the ring and could've done it then. Either way I think we all had a good laugh when they chanted "fu** PG".

I loved the crowd last night and would prefer a crowd like that over any crowd that sits there and do nothing, or any crowd that tries to make the show all about them.

the "Asuka/Joe is Gonna Kill You" was a little uncreative and took part of it away for me

It's perfect and specifically for their characters. Joe has had that chant almost his entire career(as far as I know of), and it just fits Asuka perfectly. How did the dueling "Asuka's gonna kill you" and "Bayley's gonna hug you" chants take anything away? It was one of my favorite chants of the night.

 

[Lord_Frish]

Using too many chants? That is what people complain about now? And I thought I complained too much about the WWE. I completely understand if the chants were disrespectful. But other than the 'You fucked up' which the crowd got over very fast and went right back into the match, they were a good crowd. Other than the kids cheering their heroes on Raw, the NXT crowd is the best for playing along with and adding to a match.

The Raw after Wrestlemania crowds are far far more disrespectful than even the worst NXT crowds ever are.

The person who said the 'Joe is going to kill you' chant is unoriginal, that is his chant. He earned it from the way he fights. Asuka gives a similar 'shit is about to go down' feel to an audience so she has earned it.

The 'This is awesome' chant isn't just about a specific matches being amazing anymore but about the atmosphere in the building. Sami Zayn and Shinsuke Nakamura completely deserve a chant like that. One of the best NXT ever had vs the most hyped and well respected newcomer NXT has ever had.

Some people, including me, were looking forward to this Takeover just as much as Wrestlemania itself. The crowd didn't take away from the matches for me. The botch in the Tag Match took me out of the match a bit, but the crowd reaction did. A mistimed Power Bomb is a scary thing, too many people have had severe neck injuries from not getting up properly in one.

Watching Reigns try to play face while getting the biggest heel reaction takes me out of the action more than hearing a bunch of different chants from a crowd. I understand why he gets the reaction he does.

 

[mancini999]

I've watched wrestling for a very long time. The over chanting is out of control and damn near wrecks watching the show. Like others have said the crowd will chant this is awesome or holy shit for rather normal spots. To me it's almost as bad as when the monday night crowd chants to try and take over the show.

 

[@smarkmouth]

I really have no issue with it. When it's genuine enthusiasm for the match, I can't fault the crowd. Sometimes, it may be just for an entrance, but to those people, it was genuinely "Awesome" to see Shinsuke Nakamura in a WWE/NXT ring. The only time I remember a main roster entrance get that reaction was Shield vs Wyatt's at Elimination Chamber. Sometimes, just the context is awesome.

Funny enough, I think the 'degradation' or overuse of the 'This is Awesome' chant indirectly caused a 'Fight Forever' chant for Nakamura/Zayn. As a performer, I think that could be the most flattering damn thing to hear.

 

[KBTwentyIV]

Don't get me wrong, NXT fans are the most energetic fans I've seen since old ECW days. But for the love of god, we don't need a chant every 1 minute.

I'm watching Nakamura vs Sami at Takeover and the match is barely 4 minutes in and we are deep into our 15th goddamn chant change, it's just stupid. Nakamuras entrance spawned at least 6 different chants including Holy Shit.

I think -This is awesome- has been misused about 5 times and it's only three matches in.

Great energy fans, keep the dumb chanting out though.

I totally agree! They make me sick with all their stupid chants all the time. I've been saying I wish there was a "mute crowd" button on my remote. They're just a bunch of fools! Either boo or cheer or shut the hell up!!

 

[lavitz66]

I found this just as prevalent at the HOF ceremony. Everyone is up there with limited time and the fans just don't get the hint to stop sometimes. I love great crowd energy, it makes it so much more fun to watch, but people need to start understanding that they aren't paid by WWE as entertainers.. they are there to watch the action and react to it.. they somehow think they are the show and are more interested with their chants than the matches. A great example of a good crowd, imo, was the punk/cena crowd in chicago.. Huge boos, huge cheers, chants before the match, and then great reactions during without a damned chant every 5 seconds.

 

[Wrestlingaholic]

I love NXT and I prefer the vociferous crowds - there's nothing worse than watching wrestling in front of a cold mute audience. However I agree that "this is awesome" is overused now (though this isn't exclusive to NXT, it seems that every wrestling show I watch, regardless of the company, receives it)

That said, it did annoy me a bit that you could see and hear a group of fans start chants for Sami Zayn, Nakamura, Bayley American Alpha during the Triple H v Roman Reigns match tonight. I get that the majority of fans are against Reigns at the moment (you watch, he'll be super-popular eventually), but this was the logical culmination of THE major storyline, and it was the main event of Wrestlemania. Rather than disrespecting the performers, who put on a compelling 7/10 match in my opinion, why not simply just cheer Triple H and boo Reigns like the majority of the 101,700 in attendance did? Maybe I am just tired (watched it live in the UK from 10pm and it finished ten minutes ago at 4:55am) but it bugged me a lot

 

[Azane]

I love NXT and I prefer the vociferous crowds - there's nothing worse than watching wrestling in front of a cold mute audience. However I agree that "this is awesome" is overused now (though this isn't exclusive to NXT, it seems that every wrestling show I watch, regardless of the company, receives it)

That said, it did annoy me a bit that you could see and hear a group of fans start chants for Sami Zayn, Nakamura, Bayley American Alpha during the Triple H v Roman Reigns match tonight. I get that the majority of fans are against Reigns at the moment (you watch, he'll be super-popular eventually), but this was the logical culmination of THE major storyline, and it was the main event of Wrestlemania. Rather than disrespecting the performers, who put on a compelling 7/10 match in my opinion, why not simply just cheer Triple H and boo Reigns like the majority of the 101,700 in attendance did? Maybe I am just tired (watched it live in the UK from 10pm and it finished ten minutes ago at 4:55am) but it bugged me a lot

Im sorry if you thought that was a 7/10, it was super slow and boring, it's why the Fans drifted off (theyd also been going for 6 hours at this point). You didn't hear any out of place chants the rest of the evening as far as I could tell, the crowd stayed focused and chanted towards matches that were going on for stars as they were relevant.

Most of the irrelevant and out of place chants fire up during boring or slow matches (slow isn't always bad, it just has to fit the competitors, Taker vs Shane was really slow, and thats an 8 or 9/10, not even considering the age or fact shane isn't a wrestler.)

Chants have been getting more and more smarky as of late, but hey, you paid 100 or 1000's of dollars for tickets (in some cases), you have a right to boo cheer chant. If the performers aren't keeping interest, maybe they shouldn't be given 3 world title REIGNS.

 

[Jeff Deliverer of Mail]

I love NXT and I prefer the vociferous crowds - there's nothing worse than watching wrestling in front of a cold mute audience. However I agree that "this is awesome" is overused now (though this isn't exclusive to NXT, it seems that every wrestling show I watch, regardless of the company, receives it)

That said, it did annoy me a bit that you could see and hear a group of fans start chants for Sami Zayn, Nakamura, Bayley American Alpha during the Triple H v Roman Reigns match tonight. I get that the majority of fans are against Reigns at the moment (you watch, he'll be super-popular eventually), but this was the logical culmination of THE major storyline, and it was the main event of Wrestlemania. Rather than disrespecting the performers, who put on a compelling 7/10 match in my opinion, why not simply just cheer Triple H and boo Reigns like the majority of the 101,700 in attendance did? Maybe I am just tired (watched it live in the UK from 10pm and it finished ten minutes ago at 4:55am) but it bugged me a lot

That's the big difference when you have a gigantic space with 100 thousand fans instead of Takeover size fans. The chanting at Wrestlemania was barely noticeable and died out quickly to the overall noise of the rest of the crowd. The WM crowd was also pretty great last night IMO. Not quite as energized as Takeover but 80% less noticeable non stop needless chanting.

The obvious problem was the lack of noise in the main event. The only time the fans really popped is when Stephanie got drilled.

Damien Sandow got his big pop for the ten seconds he was in the ring. WWE just doesn't have faith in the guy when he's so well received.