Lawler talks first ‘Raw’ without a crowd
Jerry “The King” Lawler boarded a plane and left Memphis early Monday morning.
The WWE Hall of Famer, just as he has thousands of times before, was there when this week’s episode of “Monday Night Raw” went live on the USA Network.
But there was one major difference. The longest-running weekly episodic television program (at more than 1,300 episodes since 1993) aired for the first time without a live audience because of coronavirus concerns.
The WWE has moved the production of “Monday Night Raw” and “Smackdown Live” to its Performance Center in Orlando, Florida, for the foreseeable future.
Lawler said he and his family will remain in Florida for the next few weeks and called Monday’s production “surreal.”
“It was definitely different,” he told The Commercial Appeal Tuesday. “Everything about it was different.”
The company also announced Monday it would put on its flagship annual event — Wrestlemania — at the Performance Center without a live audience on April 5.
Lawler is holding out hope circumstances may change between now and then. He added that everyone who enters the Performance Center has his or her temperature taken.
“Man, oh man,” said Lawler. “I don’t know. You’ve got all those big matches already signed. Edge and Randy Orton. Brock Lesnar against Drew Mcintyre. Undertaker and A.J. Styles. All those big, huge matches taking place in front of no fans. And, the Performance Center is not much bigger than the old Channel 5 studio (where ‘Memphis Wrestling’ was filmed). I don’t know — everything’s changing by the minute now.
“(But) the WWE has always been and still is a TV company and pay-perview company. Who knows, this may end up breaking every pay-per-view record there is.”
Following a short introduction and an impassioned monologue from Edge, Monday’s show shifted to an airing of the main event from “Royal Rumble,” February’s pay-per-view affair.
The third and final hour of the show featured an appearance from the legendary Undertaker, a match between
Rey Mysterio Jr. and Andrade (with guest commentary by Asuka), and what amounted to a skit involving “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and announcer Byron Saxton.
One moment during the finale prompted Austin to remark, “Tough crowd. Ain’t nobody here and it’s a tough crowd.”
Lawler said professional wrestling relies heavily on the live element of fan interaction and crowd feedback.
“That’s our obstacle (now),” he said. “How do you entertain when you don’t have a live audience? That’s how you judge whether you’re being entertaining or not — the crowd response. When nobody’s there, you can’t tell.”
In April 1981, Lawler and Terry Funk staged a match without fans at the Mid-south Coliseum in Memphis. Funk’s contention was he could not get a fair shake against Lawler in his hometown, so “The King” agreed to a match with no one on hand.
“That may have been the very first empty-arena match,” Lawler said.
“Of course, ours was done intentionally. It was at like 1 o’clock in the afternoon. It was classic at the time. When I go back and think about it, I do remember, right in the middle of the match, I thought, ‘This feels stupid.’ He’s throwing me into empty chairs and those sorts of things. There’s no fans screaming, no background noise at all. It just made you feel kind of dumb.”
The 70-year-old Lawler said he would not be opposed to adding pre-recorded crowd reactions to the live shows.
“I’ve been to (football) training camps where the players go through their practice sessions with loud music or crowd noise piped in,” he said.
“I don’t think it would hurt anything at all if they piped in some crowd noise behind the matches. And even explain it to the fans. It’ll make the matches more entertaining and it’ll make it easier for the performers themselves.”
Reach sports writer Jason Munz at jason.munz@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @munzly.