Posted in: Sports, TV, WWE | Tagged: wrestling, wwe

So Long, Thunderdome; WWE to Resume Live Touring in July

Published Fri, 21 May 2021 08:17:10 -0500

The WWE Universe wishes the Thunderdome well in its future endeavors, but we're relieved to learn that WWE will bring back live crowds this July. In a press release, WWE announced that July 16th will kick off a 25-city tour featuring live crowds for WWE's weekly televised wrestling shows, Raw and Smackdown, we well as PPV events, starting with Money in the Bank on July 18th. The tour will kick off, as these things tend to do, in Texas, where Republican officials are far more interested in suppressing minority voters than they are in suppressing the spread of coronavirus.

A full arena for WWE Raw in 2017. WWE's fortunes have changed since then, even before the pandemic, but with live events taboo for so long, they might just fill the arena again.

From a press release on WWE.com:

WWE® Returns to Live Events With 25-City Tour Beginning July 16

STAMFORD, Conn.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–WWE® (NYSE: WWE) will return to live event touring with a 25-city schedule through Labor Day. The tour will debut this July in Texas with a trio of shows:

– Friday, July 16: SmackDown – Toyota Center in Houston
– Sunday, July 18: Money In The Bank – Dickies Arena in Fort Worth
– Monday, July 19: Raw – American Airlines Center in Dallas

Tickets for the live events in Houston, Fort Worth and Dallas go on sale this Wednesday, May 26 at 11 am ET.

Additional tour stops and on-sale dates will be announced in the coming weeks.

WWE's announcement comes on the heels of a similar one by rival AEW, though AEW will launch its new era of live touring a week earlier on July 7th. That's gotta sting, Vince.

Though the return to live touring will be welcome news to bored WWE viewers, it does come with a new set of challenges. WWE has gotten used to completely controlling crowd reaction during the Thunderdome era, piping in not only cheers and boos but chants like "This is Awesome" as well. It's allowed WWE to feature the reaction they prefer to their storylines, but prior to the pandemic, fans rarely cooperated and were prone to boo storylines they didn't like, much to the chagrin of the creative team. How WWE will reckon with that change remains to be seen, but for viewers at home, seeing the crowd revolt against bad booking was one of the few bright spots to watching Raw or Smackdown, so we'll be glad to see it return.

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