WrestleMania Crowd Crushes Stephen A. Smith With Massive Boos
It was not a warm welcome from wrestling fans
WrestleMania 42 is this weekend in Las Vegas — the second year in a row the two-night event has taken place in Sin City — and fans are packing into Allegiant Stadium.
Fans of professional wrestling. Not of Stephen A. Smith.
That was abundantly clear pretty quickly.
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The first match, Night 1, was a three-man tag match between Jimmy Uso, Jey Uso, and LA Knight against Logan Paul, Austin Theory, and live streamer IShowSpeed. That sounds weird, but it was honestly a way better match than it had any business, capped off with IShowSpeed hitting Logan Paul with the same move through the announce table that he dished out to Jelly Roll at Summer Slam.
The crowd was buzzing, and before they moved on to the next match between Drew McIntyre and Jacob Fatu, they showed some celebrities in the crowd, like San Francisco 49ers tight end Greg Kittle and Indiana Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton.
Both are big WWE fans and got huge ovations, especially when Kittle chugged not just his, but also Haliburton's beer.
But then they got to Stephen A. and, well, there was a considerable mood change…
Credit to Stephen A. for embracing the heel role. I don't think he has too much of a problem with that, though. Just ask any Cowboys fan.
Of course, Stephen A. was likely in the house because this year's WrestleMania is the first one being streamed by ESPN.
In a pretty interesting move, the first hours of each night are being broadcast for free on ESPN (well, not free. You need cable to see it, but you know what I mean). The hope seems to be that giving a free taste will get people to run to their phone, tablet, or connected device and sign up for ESPN's streaming platform to watch the best.
I'm not sure how well that will work out, but hey, it's a tactic that has worked wonders for drug dealers for decades.