I went to my first wrestling show over the weekend, a WWE house show. It was a lot of fun. The matches were great and the crowd (nearly 5,000 other people were there) was on fire. NXT interviewer Kelly Kincaid hosted and she did a good job of keeping the show running. The matches:

1. L.A. Knight defeats Solo Sikoa. Fun opening match. Jimmy Uso was with Solo and kept interfering. Charles Robinson, Lil Naitch himself, tossed him out, to great applause from the crowd. After the match, L.A. Knight cut a promo about how he’s going to do A.J. Styles at WrestleMania what he just did to Solo.
2. Gunther defeats Jey Uso, Dominik Mysterio, and Shinsuke Nakamura. Great match. The crowd loved cheering for Jey, almost as much as we loved booing Dominik. Everyone (except my dad) was doing the Jey Uso wave. Even Gunther did the wave, albeit mockingly after launching Jey out of the ring.
3. The Judgment Day defeats The New Day. Good tag team match. There was a fun moment before the match started where Xavier Woods blew on his trumpet to annoy Finn Balor. At one point, Damian Priest attacked one of the New Day (can’t remember which one) when the ref wasn’t looking and then put on an amazingly smug smile. Finn got a nasty hematoma from this match but he was fine to wrestle yesterday.
4. New Catch Republic defeats Pretty Deadly. The crowd didn’t like Pretty Deadly at first but they warmed up to them when the match started going. There was a fun moment where the referee got disgusted with PD’s antics and just kicked one of them.
5. Rhea Ripley defeats Natalya and Shayna Baszler. Great match. The crowd exploded when Rhea came out, she was probably the most over person in the building aside from Cody Rhodes. Natalya got a warm reception too, she spent a decent amount of time interacting with the crowd before the match started. Dominik tried to interfere but made the mistake of confronting Shayna. A guy behind me shouted “Kill him!” and Shayna obliged, choking him out. Mami had to save him.
6. Omos defeats Odyssey Jones. MVP and Omos were running down Syracuse, calling the people trash and insulting the basketball. Odyssey, an SU alumni, came out to defend his city. To win, Odyssey had to lift Omos off both of his feet. He actually did lift him off his feet but MVP was distracting the ref. After the match, Odyssey got an ovation from the crowd, which he clearly appreciated.
7. Bianca Belair, Zelina Vega, and Michin defeats Damage CTRL (IYO SKY, Kairi Sane, and Dakota Kai; no Asuka). The crowd was really into this one. Bianca is super over, multiple people yelled “Bianca, I love you!” There was a fun moment where Kairi whacked Michin with her umbrella when the ref wasn’t looking. Michin got a lot of ring time here, more than she usually gets on TV.
8. Cody Rhodes defeats Drew McIntyre. Goddamn great match. I was here to see Cody but Drew was the highlight of the match. He was trolling the audience pretty hard, he responded to the “We want tables!” chant by putting the table back underneath the ring whenever Cody tried to get it out. He also did the G2S pose, because he has to insult CM Punk even when he’s not around. The crowd started a “You suck!” chant and he responded by putting on an amazing “What? Me?” face. Cody eventually got the win, putting Drew through the table and getting the pin. Cody then gave a promo thanking the fans for showing up, giving a shout out to Charles Robinson, and giving a giant Easter Egg to a young fan (and a piece of the table to another).

Overall, the five most over people with my crowd were Cody, Rhea, Bianca, Jey, and L.A. Knight. I’ll post some pictures that I took in the comments below.