Crowds can help make or break a wrestling card or individual match. It can be negative such as when Goldberg faced Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 20 or positive such as the intimidating atmosphere for John Cena versus Rob Van Dam at One Night Stand.

For shows I have attended in person, two stand out. The atmosphere inside the Barclays Center for the first NXT TakeOver Brooklyn was electric due to the freshness of the brand, the unexpected ability for the NXT brand to see out the arena and the quality of in ring action. Similarly the atmosphere for the G1 Supercard joint ROH / NJPW show at Madison Square Garden was raucous throughout the evening.

I enjoy hearing about times from decades gone by where the crowd was so invested in the battle between good and evil that things went too far. One such time was in the aforementioned Madison Square Garden where a riot broke out.

A sell-out crowd of 12.957 packed the Garden on Tuesday 19th November 1957. The match that led to the incident was the much anticipated main event, a tag match pitting the team of Antonino Rocca and Edouard Carpentier against the despised heel team of Dr Jerry Graham and Dick the Bruiser (Dick Affis).

You could not get a more star studded tag match at the time. Rocca was one of the biggest draws of the era. The Wrestling Observer Newsletter lists him as being the biggest draw in five separate years. Carpentier is in the Observer Hall of Fame and both of the opposition are WWE Hall of Famers.

The events of that night led to injuries. fines and wrestling being banned from the Garden. The events also received a lot of mainstream media publicity that most promotions today would only dream of. As the saying goes, bad news is better than no news at all.

Time magazine reported “few fans were surprised when Rocca attacked Graham after the bell. Only when the burly Argentine began banging his opponent’s head against a ring post and real blood fell on the canvas, did the crowd realize that it was watching a real fight for a change”. The New York Times covered the events by explaining “Rocca was already bleeding from blows he suffered in the scheduled bout. He then rammed Graham’s head against one of the brass ring posts”.

Sports Illustrated reported “chairs and bottles began to fly from all directions”. The New York Times explained the damage involved “more than 200 chairs broken on the main floor” and that one officer “was struck on the head by a bottle” and another was forced against the balcony rail trying to keep the crowd from pushing”.

Time magazine reported that Commissioner Helfand fined Rocca, Graham and their two teammates a total of $2,600 (equivalent to just under $30,000 in today’s money).

Watching wrestling in 2024, it’s difficult to imagine such an extreme audience reaction as crowds are more aware of the nature of the business. Crowd reactions in WWE are definitely becoming more passionate though and this is helping the quality of the product. Witness the reaction to Bad Bunny in Puerto Rico and Drew McIntyre in Glasgow as examples of a passionate home town crowd. It would be amazing though to time travel back to Madison Square Garden in 1957 to experience an atmosphere at a different level.