WWE RAW MOVES TO TWO HOURS (FOR NOW)
The first two-hour edition of Raw since 2012 airs tonight and begins a thirteen-week farewell to the USA Network. After WWE returned to USA in October 2005, it began to experiment with special three-hour editions of the show on occasion with the usual ratings pattern of audiences tuning in late when Raw was 9-11 p.m. ET program. In the lead-up to the show’s 1,000th episode in 2012, a permanent move to three hours was confirmed beginning on July 23, 2012 (coincidentally, in the same arena where tonight’s show airs).
This signaled the beginning of an era where WWE would have to balance television rights fees with the risk of audience burnout. When the move was made, the obvious comparison point was WCW in early 1998 which not only expanded Nitro to three hours but introduced Thunder all in the same month in January 1998. WCW had its greatest financial year ever in ’98 but was falling apart throughout the year on a creative level. In time, the three hours of Nitro became an enormous slog, and Thunder was an afterthought, but the show length was not the prime culprit. By 2000, Nitro shifted back to two hours with a belief that it would enhance the show’s audience by contracting the length. Instead, TNT lost an hour of Nitro’s viewership, there was no increase, and WCW fell off a cliff that year.
In the early era of the expanded Raw format, it becomes a haven for longer matches with beneficiaries including The Shield, The Rhodes Family, and Daniel Bryan. Over time, the audience viewing habits shifted from a late tune-in to an early tune-out and an inevitable drop in the third hour no matter how much they promoted for the 10-11 p.m. ET block.
While television audiences were dropping across the board, WWE had several years of major losses coinciding with a plateau in its creative direction and overall frustration with its product, which intensified the decline. No one argued in favor of the length of Raw, but it was a lucrative one for the company and was not going to repeat WCW’s move of handing back money with no guarantee of a tangible return beyond fan approval. After a renewal in 2014, which Vince McMahon overhyped, the company truly experienced the sports rights fee boom four years later. Raw escalated to an average annual value of $265 million for three weekly hours of Raw while SmackDown landed a $205 million per year deal with Fox.
The notion of audience burnout being the chief concern was thrown out the window after Vince McMahon’s multiple exits from the company and Paul Levesque assuming creative leadership. Suddenly, a more engaging product not only curbed audience erosion but exhibited growth during an era of cord-cutters, cord-nevers, and an emphasis on streaming content. The funny part is that the temporary move back to two hours comes during an era where there has been less criticism of the show’s length than at any time since the expansion.
USA Network is getting this thirteen-week experiment at a steal for $25 million (for context, CW is paying NXT that figure for the entire year). In its last contract, the average annual value was $265 million (due to escalators, the final year of the deal was likely well above that figure) with WWE earning just over $5 million per week to produce the show and works out to $1.7 million per hour. The next three months only net WWE $1.9 million per week plus savings this week as tonight’s show will be a double taping to accommodate the European tour next week.
In September, Raw averaged 1,490,000 viewers and a 0.47 in the 18-49 demographic with NFL competition over four of those weeks averaging 18.9 million viewers.
The positives to this move include the elimination of the third hour, which already enhances the show’s average coupled with a Monday Night Football schedule that doesn’t have weekly simulcasts on ABC, meaning this quarter’s Raw numbers are going to look favorable against last year’s. It’s a question of whether audience habits can be adjusted over a short period of thirteen weeks but a statistic to monitor is DVR viewership in Q4 and whether there is a percentage of fans more willing to watch the two-hour version live due to three hours being a non-starter for live viewing. Last week’s issue of the Wrestling Observer listed the percentage of Raw viewers who watch the show live at 68 percent.
The negatives include the experiment of a two-hour version of Raw when the show’s length on Netflix is unknown. For the streamer, a longer show means longer watch time but they are not bound by any schedule commitments and in theory, could allocate whatever time that a particular week’s episode requires.
With one less hour, obviously, fewer performers will be utilized, and becomes tricky when your prime talent such as Gunther, CM Punk, Drew McIntyre, Seth Rollins, Damian Priest, Rhea Ripley, and Judgment Day are all weekly fixtures that are expected to be on the show.
Tonight’s show airs against the New Orleans Saints vs. Kansas City Chiefs on ESPN, ESPN 2 & ESPN Deportes.
Raw will tape two episodes tonight in St. Louis including next week’s episode while the crew is on the European tour.
The following matches and segments are advertised for tonight beginning at 8 p.m. ET:
*World Heavyweight Championship: Gunther © vs. Sami Zayn
*Intercontinental Championship: Jey Uso © vs. Xavier Woods
*Donnybrook Match: Sheamus vs. Pete Dunne
POST SCHEDULE
Tonight: Rewind-A-Raw with John Pollock & Wai Ting
Tuesday: The Queen of Villains Review with Karen Peterson & JP from GRAPPL (POST Wrestling Café)
Tuesday: upNXT with Braden Herrington & Davie Portman
Tuesday: Rewind-A-Dynamite – Title Tuesday
Wednesday: Pollock & Thurston
Thursday: ASK-A-WAI Mailbag with John & Wai (POST Wrestling Café)
Thursday: MCU L8R – Agatha All Along Ep. 5 (POST Wrestling Café)
Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown (POST Wrestling Café)
Saturday: AEW WrestleDream
**Kris Ealy will join Wai Ting and I tonight on Rewind-A-Raw at the beginning of the show with a new start time of 10:05 p.m. ET.
**Eric Marcotte and I reviewed UFC 307 featuring Alex Pereira stopping Khalil Rountree Jr. in the fourth round of a great main event.
POLLOCK AUDIO NEWS UPDATE
- WWE Raw moves to two hours
- Drew McIntyre receives staples
- Braun Strowman’s injury
- NXT vs. AEW Title Tuesday
- UFC 307 report from Jack Wannan
Today for all POST Wrestling Café members.
WRESTLING NEWS
**Drew McIntyre required sixteen staples in his head after the Hell in a Cell match with CM Punk on Saturday. The wound occurred after being struck on the crown of his head by the toolbox from Punk and McIntyre bled excessively and required the referee to wipe his face several times with a towel. The spot should be criticized with the concern of any weapon shot to the head, which seems completely outdated among the options to feature blood. When WWE got away from blood use, we saw a propensity for certain performers to open each up with legitimate strikes or even strike their heads into the post rather than blading, which makes no sense beyond a knee-jerk reaction to the act of blading. Even if the toolbox was aimed at the forehead, it is still a blunt object to the head and if the desire is to bleed, there should be no debate between using a blade as opposed to his method. It’s nearly verbatim the injury Finn Balor sustained in the company’s last Hell in a Cell when he required fourteen staples in his head after Edge threw a ladder at him at WrestleMania 39.
**Braun Strowman revealed has a torn groin, which he sustained in the opening minutes of his Last Monster Standing match with Bronson Reed last Monday. It was evident there was something wrong when they returned from commercial and Strowman needed to run the ropes to send Reed off the apron and could barely move. To his credit, Strowman went another fifteen or so minutes and it wasn’t like they could cut too many corners in a match of that type and what they had planned.
**Dave Meltzer reports that the ankle injury to AJ Styles was legitimate during his match with Carmelo Hayes on Friday Night SmackDown. WWE had Jackie Redmond post an update that Styles suffered a mid-foot ligament sprain and will have an MRI this week to determine its severity.
**Turki Al-Sheikh, who is the chairman of the General Entertainment Authority of Saudi Arabia, released the poster for WWE Crown Jewel on November 2. The poster is advertising Cody Rhodes and Gunther and Liv Morgan and Nia Jax as the respective champions for the matches laid out by Paul Levesque during his announcement. The show will have a 1 p.m. ET start time.
**For one night, NXT and AEW will overlap for one hour on Tuesday. NXT is in Chesterfield, Missouri for its second show on CW featuring Randy Orton vs. Je’Von Evans and matches involving Jade Cargill, Bianca Belair, and A-Town Down Under from the main roster. AEW’s Title Tuesday has hardly been pushed as a major show by the company opting to dedicate its promotional time last week to the upcoming WrestleDream show, which is the far more important show this week. Unlike previous head-to-head contests, there doesn’t appear to be any illusions of anything but an NXT victory in the viewership and the demo. NXT will air from 8-10 p.m. ET on CW and due to being on broadcast television and affiliate news programming, there is not going to be an overrun. Dynamite airs from 9-11 p.m. ET on TNT, so NXT will have the jump by an hour and will affect Dynamite, although AEW gets the unopposed hour at the end. Essentially, this provides for 24 hours of bragging rights but for AEW’s bottom line, they want to use these two hours to sell Saturday’s pay-per-view and need to hammer home the notion that it could be Bryan Danielson’s last match as a full-time wrestler, which should be the hook.
The NXT show features Randy Orton vs. Je’Von Evans, Oba Femi vs. Tony D’Angelo for the North American Championship, Bianca Belair & Jade Cargill teaming with Kelani Jordan against Fatal Influence, and Axiom & Nathan Frazer vs. A-Town Down Under for the NXT tag titles. Trick Williams, Cora Jade & Roxanne Perez will be appearing. Plus, a performance by Sexyy Red.
AEW’s Title Tuesday includes Bryan Danielson & Wheeler Yuta vs. Claudio Castagnoli & PAC, Mercedes Mone vs. Emi Sakura for the TBS & STRONG Women’s title, and a #1 contenders match between Dr. Britt Baker and Willow Nightingale. HOOK will also call out Taz’s attacker and there will be a face-to-face segment involving Darby Allin and Brody King.
**Due to the WrestleDream pay-per-view on Saturday, it doesn’t appear there will be an episode of Collision this week. TNT’s schedule only lists Rampage from 10-11 p.m. ET followed by the Countdown special at 11 (last month before All Out, they had a three-hour block on Friday with Collision and Rampage).
**NJPW’s Road to King of Pro Wrestling tour is in Shizuoka on Tuesday with Tetsuya Naito, Shingo Takagi & Yota Tsuji taking on Zack Sabre Jr., Ryohei Oiwa & Hartley Jackson in the main event. The tour continues on Thursday in Saitama, Friday in Nagano, and Saturday in Ibaraki before next Monday’s King of Pro Wrestling event at Sumo Hall featuring Tetsuya Naito vs. Zack Sabre Jr. for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship.
**Star Jr. has been added to MLW’s Lucha Apocalypto event on Saturday, November 9 at Cicero Stadium.
**The TKO closed at $126.13 on Monday.
**Julianna Peña became a two-time bantamweight champion at UFC 307 with a highly debatable split decision win over Raquel Pennington. The fight came down to your interpretation of the first round, which was very close but felt clear enough for Pennington, and most agreed. Of the 26 media members (myself included), 25 scored it 48-47 for Pennington and one had it a draw. Judge Michael Bell and Sal D’Amato scored the fight for Peña, scoring Rounds 1-3 for Peña, and Derek Cleary had it 48-47 for Pennington. After the fight, Peña was asked about fighting Kayla Harrison and they had a camera on Harrison backstage as Peña totally whiffed and instead, challenged Amanda Nunes to come out of retirement. It would seem impossible that Harrison is not getting the next title fight and Peña is a better opponent to market that fight than Pennington. Harrison ran through Holly Holm in her UFC debut in April and beat Ketlen Vieira on Saturday, which is more than enough to justify a title fight in a division that has been floundering since Nunes’ retirement and a far cry from its glory period with Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate, and Holly Holm on top of the division.
**This Saturday’s UFC Fight Night is an ESPN+ card beginning at 4 p.m. ET with the prelims and 7 p.m. for the main card. It is headlined by a flyweight fight between Brandon Royval (16-7) and Tatsuro Taira (16-0) at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas.
***
UFC 307: Alex Pereira vs. Khalil Rountree Jr.
John Pollock and Eric Marcotte review UFC 307 with Alex Pereria defending the UFC light heavyweight championship against Khalil Rountree Jr.
***
WWE Bad Blood Review
John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWE Bad Blood 2024 featuring CM Punk vs. Drew McIntyre inside Hell In A Cell, and Cody Rhodes & Roman Reigns teaming up against Jacob Fatu & Solo Sikoa.
***
COLLISION COURSE
John Siino & Kate From MTL are back to talk AEW Collision, featuring Private Party, Top Flight, and House of Black in a #1 contenders’ match for the Tag Team titles.
***
POST PURORESU
WH Park & Karen Peterson review another busy month in the Japanese scene as we prepare for the sprint toward the end of 2024 and the start of 2025.
***
REWIND-A-SMACKDOWN
Wai Ting and Neal Flanagan review the final WWE SmackDown before Bad Blood featuring a Tag Team Ladder Match and a Dumpster Match.
***
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