Are professional wrestlers just the world’s most muscular theater kids? To quote wrestling legend “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, who appeared on last night’s episode of WWE’s Monday Night Raw: Hell yeah.
Broadcast live without an audience for the first time in history, both Monday Night Raw on the USA Network and last Friday’s episode of Smackdown on Fox stripped wrestling down to its bare essentials: a ring, a microphone, and wrestlers to use both. The result was less like the WWE’s usual played-to-the-rafters gladiatorial spectacle and more like tech week for a black-box production. It showcased the performers at their weirdest, wildest, and most, well, theatrical.
I wrote about the strangeness of wrestling without crowds for Vulture.
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