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WWE RAW ON-SITE REPORT
JULY 17, 2023
ATLANTA, GA.
AIRED LIVE ON USA
REPORT BY PWTORCH READER CHRIS FROM ATLANTA
-If you could count, there’d be maybe a hundred empty seats that I saw, but that’s the entire arena. It was full all the way to the top.
-I can’t remember the last time a crowd was this lively in this arena for a WWE TV event in Atlanta. Maybe when Cody fought Wardlow in a cage at an AEW event.
-When Akira Tozawa came out for the pre-Raw match, his pop was huge! Riddick Moss beat him.
-Fans really like Cody Rhodes in Atlanta. There was zero push-back on Cody. I liked that came out in ring gear and a t-shirt instead of a suit. It makes me want to cheer for him even more.
-It was interesting to see how close the camera guy got when Brock Lesnar was beating down Cody. The lens was about six inches away.
-After the angle on TV, Lesnar left the ring, but then returned and hit him again with a chair. The crowd chanted for Cody. Cody stood and left the ring on his own. Fans cheered.
-The crowd was really into Rhea Ripley. When they showed the top 20 Instagram photos, the last one was Ripley and Dominik and the crowd popped for that. They cheered Ripley and booed Dominik.
-After the backstage interview with Seth, the fans seemed anxious they weren’t going to get to sing Seth Rollins’ song, but then he came out after Raw went off the air and the crowd got to sing his theme.
-Being in person seeing The Judgement Day is so different than on TV. The lighting changes, they have a big logo in the background, a spotlight on them, the arena is almost completely purple, and they walk out looking like badasses. There was a little girl who hated that I was cheering for The Judgment Day. She turned around and gave me the most evil look. Her dad was like don’t start a fight with people around us.
-The arena booed Dominik so loudly anytime he said or did anything. It was so fun to boo him and fun to see that in person. I thought they were piping in boos before, but tonight it was all fans booing him live.
-The low point was the Women’s Tag Title match, probably. When the title change happened, people popped. During the match, it was eh.
-When they brought the Viking Raiders props all over the ring, it felt like there wasn’t anything going on for 20 minutes. Chad Gable woke up the crowd by German suplexing a Raider off the set piece. That match was fun.
-We couldn’t understand anything Ronda Rousey said because she talked so fast. It was like Excalibur plugging upcoming TV matches on AEW Dynamite. The crowd was into Shayna Baszler. She got a big reaction when she went after Rousey in the suite.
-During commercial breaks, they had a DX crotch chop camera where everyone was doing the suck-it gesture.
(Listen to the full Wade Keller Post-show HERE including the conversation this report is based on with our on-site correspondent.)
-Samantha Irvin is so great during commercials. She put so much into entertaining everyone. She was leading the charge for crowd engagement during breaks.
-After Raw ended, Finn Balor came back out after Sami Zayn & Kevin Owens won. Seth’s music hit and he ran out and cleared the ring. Then they did a promo where Sami and Seth came up with lyrics for a new song called “Don’t Be So Angry, Kevin!” to the theme of Seth’s song. The crowd sang that for what seemed like five minutes. Owens said he loved the song and they hugged.
-There were a lot of signs by fans about Rhea and Dom. There were a lot of women wanting to be Ripley’s friend. I’ll leave it at that. They couldn’t put those on TV or the big screen.
-Everybody used to “woo!” but that’s been replaced by L.A. Knight’s “yeah!” As we were leaving, a fan said, “I say dummy and you say yeah!” I’m thinking, no, I’m not saying that, you just called me a dummy, but everybody did.
-They had a “Georgia’s Own Cody Rhodes” t-shirt and an “Atlanta 3:16” shirt and a Georgia Bulldog world title belt and an Atlanta Braves title belt and an autographed Cody Rhodes waist belt. The majority of shirts I saw most fans actually wearing were Stone Cold, The Rock, NWO, and Bloodline. One family, the parents were wearing the NWO t-shirts and the kids were wearing Bloodline t-shirts.
If you attend a live WWE, AEW, or any other pro wrestling event, you are encouraged to send a match report and live notes to pwtorch@pwtorch.com. You can also volunteer to be an on-site correspondent on the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Post-show within an hour after Raw, Dynamite, Smackdown, and Collision when you attend in person. Send a note if you are interested to wadekellerpodcast@pwtorch.com.
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