Recent WWE Fan Incidents Indicate Company Must Beef Up Security

The distance between fan and WWE Superstar has grown dangerously thin too often of late. The company has no choice but to bolster its event security to make sure that these incidents don't lead to something tragic.

On Monday's Raw, an audience member once again decided to force his way into the action. It's part of a recent pattern in which the border between spectator and performer has deteriorated.

Seth Rollins sauntered down the entrance ramp to begin his second bout of the night with his two championship belts hung over his shoulders. A fan soon popped up next to him with seemingly nothing more on his mind than grabbing his five minutes of fame.

A fan posted a Vine video of the incident:

Nothing much happened here. Security soon pounced on the guy. The show went on with no further hitches.

But as PWInsider's Mike Johnson pointed out, this situation could have potentially been much more serious:

This kind of security breach has not been rare lately. In August, an audience member hurled a plastic Money in the Bank briefcase at Roman Reigns at a live event in Victoria, British Columbia. The object tagged Reigns in the head. Security soon escorted the man out of the arena.

The Canadian Press (h/t CTV News) reported, "The 31-year-old male has been banned from any WWE wrestling shows in the future."

Just a week ago, a fan hopped over the guardrail at a SmackDown taping in Providence, Rhode Island. He managed to sneak up to Dean Ambrose, getting just inches away from him before security acted. 

TMZ claimed that the fan "was holding a sharp object which at least one fan says was a knife."

From the video that has since been shared of the would-be attack, it's hard to see what, if anything, is in the man's hands. Still, this was far too close of a call, and the same goes for all of these occurrences.

Of the incident in British Columbia, Reigns told the Miami Herald, "It didn't hurt, but it's scary. What if it was something that could have hurt me?" That is what is so troubling about all these incidents. Had the plastic briefcase been a metal one, or had the fan who walked alongside Rollins had more sinister intentions, these stories could have been tragic rather than simply surreal.

Fighting Spirit Magazine stated the obvious about this run of odd instances:

Of course, these aren't the first times that fans have evaded security long enough to get on camera or give the wrestlers a scare.

Ryback geared up to smash The Miz with a clothesline in 2012 when a fan leaped into the ring. In Newcastle, England, a fan jumped the barricade while dressed as a red Power Ranger and later bragged about it on YouTube. A group of London pranksters invaded SmackDown this April. 

While WWE has seen these kinds of incidents many times before, the rate of occurrence is picking up. It doesn't take a statistician to figure out that two fan run-ins in a week and at least four in 2015 is far too many.

Security can not watch every fan for every moment of a WWE show, but there has to be a crackdown on those close to ringside and standing along the entrance ramp. The cost of hiring a few extra guards far outweighs what could happen if one of these fans is deranged rather than simply an attention-seeker.

WWE doesn't need any help in imagining that kind of audience member.

The company just witnessed an obsessed fan be shot outside of its training center. As Orlando Sentinel reported last week, an Orange County deputy sheriff shot a man outside the Performance Center who was "fixated on a female wrestler."

Shannon Butler from WFTV, ABC's central Florida affiliate, reported that a witnessed described the man as "crazy."

A TMZ report stated that the fan "allegedly showed up in a wrestling outfit, banged on windows and threatened to kick everyone's ass because they wouldn't hire him. One of the times he was swinging a large chain, and police had to subdue him at gunpoint."

The insertion of a fan with that level of instability into any of these recent stories is a frightening thought.

WWE has no choice but to work to prevent that from happening. More bodies around the ring and more preparation for these occurrences are musts.

After Gunter Parche leaped from the stands and stabbed Monica Seles in 1993, the sports world knew it had to adjust how it handled security.

PA/Getty Images

An article by the Agence France-Presse (h/t the Australian) reflecting on the Seles stabbing described what sports security is like now as a result of that attack: "Almost every sporting fixture now features security personnel with their backs to the playing arena, scanning the crowd for trouble. Interaction between players and fans is usually done in close proximity to beefy, armed guards." 

WWE does not want to wait for someone to drive a knife into a wrestler's back until it makes changes to security. It has to find a way to make the "fan made famous by vaulting over the guardrail" an extinct species.