On March 25, one week before Wrestlemania 38, WWE's Friday Night Smackdown returned to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY, for the first time in three years. The last time Smackdown filmed here was in December 2019, three months before COVID-19 triggered a nationwide lockdown on all mass gatherings.

A lifelong WWE fan, I attended the show with my wife and 7-year-old son. The three of us are all vaccinated, and so even though I have pre-existing health conditions, we finally felt safe enough to let our guard down a little. This was the first time any of us had attended a live event since the pandemic began. It was my son's first WWE live event ever. And the visceral feeling, of cheering and booing shoulder-to-shoulder with thousands of people, was a joyful one.

Television optimizes everyone--camera angles, editing, and lighting make everyone look their best. But experiencing wrestling live? The cream rises to the top. Shinsuke Nakamura, Sasha Banks, Rhea Ripley, and Randy Orton are in a class of their own; your eyes are drawn to them immediately. It's the difference between playing to the camera (which all the Superstars can do quite well), and projecting that charisma to the back rows of a massive arena.