What Is The Best Way To Watch a WWE PPV? Home Alone vs. With Friends vs. In the Arena

I was there live at the NXT Takeover Toronto show in November last year, and I gotta say, it was an absolutely horrible experience! Nothing to do with the matches of course, they were all great, but these fucking morons behind me wouldn’t shut up the whole time with their “hilarious” jokes, chants (from the 300 level that no one in the ring can hear anyways), and “profound” contemplations on the pro-wrestling “business”.

This kind of situation can really ruin a whole show for everyone in the vicinity, and unless you’re one of these selfish idiots you’ve probably been in a situation like this one. I feel for those dozens of poor people at a live event who have to suffer through a great night of fights that are ruined by some smark assholes.

On the other hand, you could also stay at home alone in your Cheetos-stained sweat pants, watching the show on your laptop in the dark, and hating how pathetic your dorky life feels. Then again, you could be at a bar or in some “man cave” with a select few friends or acquaintances as everyone eats and talks over the whole show.

Seems like you just can’t win right? I mean, this isn’t opera, the etiquette – socially or personally – for pro-wrestling viewing is about as low brow as a Monster Jam show or maybe going to a strip club: you’ve either gotta act like a fool or feel like one.

So what exactly then is the best way to watch a WWE pay-per-view event?

The 411mania Wrestling 3-Way Dance matches up three opponents in an intellectual battle every week. The biggest advantages and disadvantages of each contender will be highlighted before a final ranking will declare the ultimate winner. This week’s 3-Way Dance:

What is the Best Way to Watch a Live PPV?

Live Arena vs. With Friends vs. Home Alone

Biggest advantage of watching a live PPV…

Home Alone = Concentration.

When you’re sitting alone in your room you can turn off the lights, turn up the sound, and just get lost in the broadcast. And these days we’re talking massive HD screens, Retina-screen devices, everything looks just so awesomely clear and sounds great (aside from that generally horrible commentary, but that’s another issue).

There’s no one to look at, talk to, smell or tolerate – it’s just you and the wrestling. Pure.

With Friends = Discussion.

On the other hand, with the right group of friends there is a lot of fun to be had reacting and discussing all that is going on during the show. Unlike the pure focus you’ll have alone, you may miss some of what’s going on while you discuss, like, “How cool was Repo-Man” or whatever, but generally having people you know with you helps keep the conversation reasonable and specific to your circle rather than the nonsense you’ll hear around you at a live event.

This kind of bro-bonding can lead to making pro-wrestling more than just a dumb TV show event, but actually something social and fun, and this is also a nice contrast to the pretentiousness of being a critic who picks apart piece of “art” that watching wrestling live becomes when you are by yourself.

Live Arena = Atmosphere.

When you watch the reaction to a John Cena, Roman Reigns, or Brock Lesnar on TV it seems cool or even pretty wild, but when you’re actually in the arena and experience that reaction it just feels like you’re literally sitting in the middle of a storm.

I’ve seen some outstanding playoff sporting events live, concerts for the biggest music acts of their time, and even once saw Jackie Chan host a charity fashion show in a football stadium, and nothing compares to atmosphere of a really hot wrestling crowd.

Biggest disadvantage of watching a live PPV…

Home Alone = Distraction.

Being at home does tend to lead to the simple distraction of the Internet. Sure, you can go on Twitter or comment boards from the other two locations, but if you’re home alone it’s got to be the most dangerous for distracting you completely from paying attention to the show.

And you see it all the time, people are so busy writing out their thoughts about what’s happened/should happen that they could be totally missing something actually amazing happening – like, say, talking about how Roman Reigns should just turn heel right in the middle of a sequence during the final 10 minutes of a WrestleKingdom main event.

If you want to stay home to avoid the annoying morons at live events, then don’t just blindly interact with even worse ones sitting alone at home.

With Friends = Food

There’s nothing worse, in my opinion, than hearing people eat while trying to watching something cool. I hate it at the movies, I hate it for sports, and I definitely hate it for wrestling.

Maybe you can nurse a nice hot tea or nibble on some soft crackers and humus, but a bunch of dudes eating nachos, drinking beer, or licking wing sauce off their fingers – it can get disgusting quick.

It’s loud, and distracting, and takes away from the purity of the wrestling experience. Chomping on disgusting foods with your mouth open and gurgling vats of soda should be reserved for halls of sticky plastic fast food furniture where slobs can face each other with their atrocious displays of gross humanity, not where every stray flying half-chewed morsel and sugary spittle can spray into the faces and backs of necks of potentially normal, calm, rational, thin, respectable people just trying to calmly enjoy a night of live entertainment.

Live Arena = Price

The price of a live ticket to any kind of event is wildly out of control, especially when you’re competing with re-seller bot farms in Indonesia to try and get an already price-gouging face value ticket when they “officially” go on sale, let alone 20 minutes later when they pop up three times more expensive on said re-seller websites.

Considering what it costs to sit even in the 300-level of an arena where you probably will have a bunch of idiots behind you, or some rattled parent with 4 kids beside you who gave up trying to handle those annoying little fucks years ago, who wants to pay for that nightmare?

Now that it only costs like $10 to watch a PPV on the WWE Network in pristine quality, it almost seems insane to pay the ludicrously higher price to eliminate all the good things about watching it at home: control of the environment, a perfect view, commentary, and comfort. With the WWE PPV business basically a television production more than a live event spectacle, in what other scenario would you pay like 10 times the price of something to get a tenth of the quality?

For instance, would you pay $30 for a $3 bag of Doritos if that bag only came with 6 nachos, they only had half the seasoning, and you’re surrounded by crazy people yelling in your face the whole time about why eating Doritos sucks? Obviously not.

Okay, fine, so these are your three choices, but what exactly is the best way to watch a live WWE PPV event?

#3 = With Friends

Me personally, I have great wrestling friends, and I would watch wrestling with them anytime. But I’m just assuming that there are a lot of YOU who have a bunch of dopey friends, or half-fan acquaintances, or worst of all wives or dumb girlfriends, who you all need to try and impress by saying all kinds of stupid shit during the show, and therefore I’d imagine this would be a terrible experience.

Admittedly, I’m basing this on very little evidence other than the annoying-ness of most people I’ve seen at pro-wrestling live events, and how the most ultra-annoying amongst them tend to group together irritating piles of post-hipster embarrassments. And I can only imagine the gross scene on display when they’re all gathered in some shitty sports bar or action figure covered apartment, either drunkenly yelling out bad jokes or having a smark fantasy-booking sesh while actual wrestling is going on.

Unless of course you’re Japanese. Japanese wrestling fans in Japan are interesting and civilized people, and I hope they pro-create and keep that little island full of opulent, intelligent wrestling fans for generations to come.

#2 = Live Arena

Wrestling cannot exist in a bubble (I guess) and therefore it always needs an audience. As much as I hate being amongst that audience most times, without them there really is no show (despite Beyond Wrestling’s best attempts).

When you’re with your “friends” you always know the kind of goofball motherfuckers who are gonna ruin the show for you, but at least it’s just a lottery when you buy a ticket for the live show. There’s a chance (probably 50/50) that you might end up in a section of just nice, normal fans, and not get-over, chanting-practicing, show-ruiners.

But still, as enjoyable as it is sitting inside a nicely hyped crowd biting for all the perfect cues to cheer and boo without being jackasses, nothing really beats watching wrestling the #1 way…

#1 = Home Alone

At the end of the day it all comes down to the raw experience of observation. Does anyone reading this want to be wrestling inside the ring anymore than they want to be sitting ringside at an event?

We’re observers.
We’re analyzers.
We’re super-fans.

By “we” I’m talking about all of you… the readers of this… we’re better than those mainstream schlubs with their signs and their “cool” chants. And in many ways we’re even better than those wrestlers, most of them with their dumb moves and stupid characters. We know how the fans should act, we know how the wrestlers should wrestle… and we can’t know that by being part of it.

We’re the connoisseurs of the fine art of near-naked people making wildly exaggerated bodily reactions to aerobic fight dancing. And we need to see it the best way possible, with the least amount of distractions.

Let those audiences of kids and drunkards have their chance to wave on TV and cheer/boo John Cena. Let those bars and basements filled with cliques of hipster doofuses have their social justifications for watching this stupid sport thing.

We’re the real fans, and we watch this shit alone goddamn it!