Today on Not Sam Wrestling all the backlash of backlash Puerto Rico sets a new standard for pay-per-view

audiences AEW sounds like 60,000 tickets and the new

World Heavyweight Championship tournament rules are announced. What do we think this is not Sam wrestling?

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Introducing your host from New York. Here is Sam Roberts.

Oh, baby. Yes, yes, yes, it is. Sam Roberts.

For what? 446? Something like that. Welcome everybody. Welcome to Not Sam Wrestling coming right off a premium live event. What better time to hit you with a Not Sam Wrestling. I have to tell you that international wrestling fans are controlling the top spot right now. As far as fandom goes, I don't know if you're going to be able to get a new title.

If in America, we've just been spoiled and had it too good for too long, but internationally, they're reminding us right now exactly how good that we have it. I mean, it was such a treat on Friday. Just watching Smackdown emanating from San Juan, Puerto Rico. And not only it's really fun.

Getting these episodes to Smackdown. It's almost like back in the day. You remember before a WWE paper view, they would do Sunday night heat Sunday night heat was a show that WWE would have live on Sunday nights. Well, I guess it wouldn't always be live. But it would be Sunday nights at 7 p.m. on MTV and it would be live before paper views.

So instead of a traditional pre show, they had that MTV time slot. Otherwise, I guess they would tape it usually. But on paper view nights, you would get an hour of Sunday night heat and they'd be in the building. This is when every paper view had a different set. They'd build specific sets for paper views. So you'd get a look at the arena. You'd get a feel for it. And it really got you excited for the event. You'd also get a taste of what the audience was going to be like.

Because what you do is you switch over to the paper view channel after heat. And hopefully pay your 35 bucks, 40 bucks and watch this paper view. Watch the continuation of what you saw building up on Sunday night heat. And that's the feeling that I get when they run Smackdown in the same venue as these international paper views.

Seeing a backlash in San Juan and the fact that it came from not only the same arena on Friday, but it was the same set and everything. So you got this feel I thought the entrance was awesome. Not just because it was different, but that side screen and the narrowness of the entryway.

Made it seem like the audience was just pouring on top of you as superstars walked to the ring. It felt like there wasn't room for one more chair in that arena. And that's what it sounded like to was actually really interesting.

Because as you're watching Smackdown, it was like the fans from San Juan were just there for absolutely everything. Every good guy got cheered. Every bad guy got booed. You know, the Dominic Mysterio thing. It's becoming a thing now, you know, it started at first very organically. I think really the night after WrestleMania was the first time that it was like, oh, yes, it happened before. I remember

I watched Dominic get booed at Monday Night Raw in Madison Square Garden. And I actually believe it would have been the first Monday night Raw that maybe triple H and Stephanie were in charge of at the time. I remember going there around that time. It was around that time, but it was Madison Square Garden for sure. And I remember sitting in the audience and watching Dominic Mysterio getting booed and thinking they finally found it with Dominic. My God, are they on to something.

But it was the promo either the night after or the Friday night after WrestleMania when Dominic couldn't get a word out. No matter what he did, it was just raining booze on him. And that's happened here and there like if somebody comes out and says a terrible thing about the home sports team during the playoff or something like that, then sure, you know, it's happened, but it's rare that just a character or what happened to Roman.

After WrestleMania 33 when he beat Undertaker and he showed up to Raw and he just stood in the ring for 10 minutes and got booed.

Dominic though not only did that happen after WrestleMania, but now it's a thing like audiences have seen how fun it is and how good it feels to do. And so wherever he goes, he's getting booed out of the building.

San Juan did the best job of it so far because he got me just boo, it was a lot, it was deafening deafening is the word, but all the good guys getting a cheered all the bad guys getting booed. I loved it.

And then they opened backlash and they use that same drone shot. I thought the drone shot was really cool. It showed you what you're capable of now if you're going to do that drone shot, you do have to have the environment that you had at backlash where the audience is absolutely full of people because it's tough to avoid those spots where maybe you've thrown a blackout curtain up or there's not a lot of seats sold.

When you've got a drone those drones have those wide angles on them, but when you've got an arena like this. I think it's awesome. I thought some of the entrances at the pay per view were complemented big time by the bad bunny entrance, for example, but that opening shot that they use both on Smackdown and at the pay per view where the drone starts outside the building and goes into the building up the concourse where the fans are and then into the arena itself and then down towards the ring.

Just a really cool visual to start the show. Um, and I thought, I mean, let's get right into it, right? Well, while we're talking about the fans before we talk about where bad bunny fell on the card. While we're talking about the fans, it almost felt like, especially in that opening match between EO and Bianca Belair.

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