Michael Perry on July 26, 2022
WWE Raw drew a huge sell-out crowd last night at Madison Square Garden. The world’s most famous arena was jam-packed with enthusiastic fans who were ready to see something different. It was the first episode of Raw since the retirement of Vince McMahon, and New Yorkers came out in droves to check it out.
In the end, the show still had Vince McMahon’s fingerprints all over it. The script was largely finalized last Thursday, before McMahon’s retirement. That didn’t keep fan interest from spiking after Vince stepped down.
On today’s Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer discussed the enthusiasm in New York City for last night’s Raw. The show drew close to 14,000 fans. The secondary market prices for tickets increased dramatically after the public found out Vince McMahon was gone.
“But yeah, it’s interesting, because the interest in this show, I expect a very big rating, but the interest in this show in New York was gigantic. They sold out, they sold out yesterday. They were on track to either sell out or come very close to sell out. I think they were on track to do about 12,000 people and I think that there was probably about 14. Definitely very good, just like Boston on Friday. Very good last few days, which is again, another sign that they’ve got a lot of momentum, but the secondary market. Just, like, the demand for tickets.
I think that secondary market was like $139 for the worst seats in the house and way over and it wasn’t like… I had been tracking the secondary market tickets for this Garden show, and it was normal. You know, it was just like any other show. It was a little bit higher… It was higher than the prices because they were sold out, but it wasn’t like there was any great demand or anything like that. The demand came in the last day or two.
It was the whole thing of like, I think that people thought this was going to be this historic show, the first show without Vince, and they probably would do all these incredible things and really, it was, you know… The Rey Mysterio stuff was different from usual, but there was really no great angle past, you know, a match to set up a no-DQ match on SummerSlam with Rey and Dominik against Finn Balor and Damian Priest and Rhea Ripley returned, but aside from that angle… And Roman Reigns appeared. No Ronda Rousey, interestingly enough. Aside from that, it was just, I would call [it] a normal Raw.”
WWE has been doing great business at the gate. Another huge crowd only further proves the company’s momentum. With a new head of creative and co-CEOs in place, WWE is hoping to continue to be a hot property moving forward as they transition into a new era.
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Transcription by Ringside News
July 26, 2022 7:57 am
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