Rohan Raja: Wrestling Without A Crowd Actually Made Me A Better Worker

Rohan Raja benefitted from wrestling without a crowd.

After signing with the company in November 2020, Raja made his debut for WWE on the April 29, 2021 episode of NXT UK. He took on Teoman in a singles contest. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the show was presented with no fans in attendance.

Speaking with Fightful Overbooked’s In The Weeds podcast, Raja said that he was still able to lock in despite the lack of an audience.

“That was weird. I had my debut in front of no one, so my first match there in front of no one. I’m playing a babyface so when I first came in, the first few matches I’m like, ‘Yo, I have no crowd. Who am I going to feed the energy off?’ It was weird. As soon as you’re walking through gorilla, you’ve got like Shawn Michaels and [Matt] Bloom and [William] Regal sitting there, so you have that instant like, ‘It’s go time.’ They’re sitting there watching the screen like you’re just about to walk out. But it was until I was waiting just behind the curtain, I could see the light of the camera and as soon as that turned red, I was in the zone. So it almost didn’t really feel like the crowd wasn’t even there cause I’m like, hey, there’s millions of people watching on the network at the time and at home.”

Raja followed that up by claiming that wrestling in front of no crowd made him a better worker.

“I feel like though — and Joe Coffey said this as well — but I feel like wrestling in front of no crowd actually made me a better worker. You kind of have to place — when you’re putting together the structure of the match and you’re kind of — a lot of the times when you get to that next level, you can just change things instantly and restructure things on the fly. It just depends on what the crowd is feeling. That’s kind of how I work, you don’t go with what you always have planned. It just depends on what the crowd is feeling and what kind of crowd you’re in there with. But working there in front of no crowd, you just had more timing to kind of register where to put things. I can’t really explain it, but it really made me a better worker. The biggest downside was there was no crowd, but the one downside was that everything hurt much more and that sucked. Every bump, I felt straight away. When there was no crowd and I’m slapping the mat, I’m like, ‘Yo, is this ring stiffer or something? What’s happened?’ Then when I got to the back, I was like, ‘Yeah, I just felt stuff a lot more.’ I’m looking at everyone else and they’re like, ‘Yeah, join the queue.’”

Elsewhere in the interview, Rohan Raja talked about the success of MLP Northern Rising. Check out his full comments by clicking here.

Fans can check out Fightful Overbooked’s full interview with Rohan Raja in the video linked at the top of this article.