Since its launch earlier this month, WWE’s virtual fan experience, the ThunderDome, has, in a way, allowed the company to simulate the presence of live audiences during its television shows and pay-per-views. As a number of fans have apparently been caught using the service to troll the promotion in various ways, a new report discussed a few of the other reasons why viewers were booted from the ThunderDome.
Citing this week’s edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter , Ringside News wrote that the ThunderDome’s moderators had cracked down on certain fans for “anything they can do at a certain point.” These allegedly included one individual who was spotted wearing a T-shirt of former WWE superstar Dean Ambrose and a second person who was chanting for Big E during his match against Sheamus.
According to Ringside News , the decision to ban the person in the Ambrose shirt was understandable, given that the grappler now works for AEW, where he goes by the ring name Jon Moxley. As for the second fan, the outlet further cited the Wrestling Observer , which wrote that officials mistakenly thought he “was chanting something else” other than Big E’s name, hence the decision to boot him from the service.
As previously noted by WrestlingNews.co , several users had been caught showing inappropriate imagery in the first week following the ThunderDome’s debut. Last Sunday, a Twitter user claimed to have been banned for displaying a “Fire Velveteen Dream” sign during the SummerSlam pay-per-view — a reference to the misconduct allegations the NXT star has faced this year.
One day later, social media users reported multiple instances of offensive or controversial virtual fan images on the Monday Night Raw broadcast, including one that featured Chris Benoit and another that looked like it came from a Ku Klux Klan rally.
“This abhorrent behavior does not reflect WWE’s values and we have zero tolerance for these unacceptable acts,” a company official told the New York Post on Tuesday.
With this week’s episode of Friday Night SmackDown coming up in a few hours, it remains to be seen if more fans will be shown behaving in a disruptive manner on the ThunderDome. However, WrestlingNews.co quoted Bryan Alvarez, who recently said on Wrestling Observer Live that WWE plans to find some repeat ThunderDome users that “are going to obey the rules no matter what” and place them in the lower bowl of the arena. First-timers, meanwhile, will reportedly be placed in the upper bowl, thus making it much harder to see what they’re doing onscreen.
