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WWE Raw

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File:WWE RAW.png
WWE RAW logo.
For the video game based on the show, see WWE RAW (video game).

WWE RAW is the Monday night professional wrestling show for World Wrestling Entertainment. It airs live on USA Network in the United States every Monday night, as well as in Canada on TSN, and in the United Kingdom on Sky Sports. RAW is generally seen as WWE's flagship program over its sister program SmackDown!. The program is usually 2 hours long, with a built-in overrun of about 10-15 minutes. Beginning in 1997, the two hours of RAW had different names for television ratings purposes, so WWE could demand higher advertising charges for the more-watched second hour. Prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks, the two hours were known as RAW is WAR and The War Zone, as WAR is the anagram of RAW. References to WAR were eliminated after the September 11 terrorist attacks, when WWE began calling the first hour simply WWF RAW and the second hour as The RAW Zone. When the change was made, the entire program was just referred to as WWF RAW (and later WWE RAW) on-camera.

Occasionally, RAW is aired on same-day tape delay when the WWE is on an overseas tour.

The current theme song of RAW is "Across the Nation" by The Union Underground.


Show history

RAW was originally aired on the USA Network. The only networks to have aired RAW in the United States are the USA Network and TNN, which is now Spike TV. It returned to USA Network on October 3, 2005. Before that, the last USA Network telecast of RAW was on September 18, 2000.

The current RAW is the successor to WWF Monday Night RAW, which first aired on January 11, 1993 on USA Network for 1 hour and then later moved to 2 hours. The original RAW broke new ground in televised professional wrestling. Traditionally, wrestling shows were taped on sound stages with small audiences or at large arena shows. The RAW formula was very different than that of its predecessor, Prime Time Wrestling: instead of canned matches, with studio voice overs and canned chat, RAW was a show shot to a live audience, with angles as they happened.

RAW originated from the Manhattan Center, a small New York City theater and aired live each week. The combination of an intimate venue and live action proved highly successful. However, the weekly live schedule proved to be a financial drain on the WWF, and taped shows began airing every other week. Eventually, RAW aired live shows only about once per month, with the other shows being taped. A notable taped RAW in recent times was the November 14, 2005 edition. This episode, taped the previous evening, was part of a scheduled joint RAW/SmackDown! "supershow" from the Target Center in Minneapolis. After Eddie Guerrero died in his Minneapolis hotel room the day of the scheduled show, both RAW and SmackDown! events were turned into tribute shows for Guerrero.

The original hosts of RAW were Vince McMahon, the "Macho Man" Randy Savage, and Rob Bartlett. Sean Mooney conducted the interviews and Bobby "The Brain" Heenan also helped contribute. Later in 1993, Rob Bartlett was dropped from the broadcasting team and was replaced by Bobby Heenan. Then on December 6, 1993, Gorilla Monsoon "kicked Bobby Heenan out of the WWF forever." In reality, this was an angle between Monsoon and his close friend Heenan, who decided to leave the WWF in order to lighten his travel schedule and because he didn't want to take a 50% paycut. After about a year, RAW moved out of the Manhattan Center and traveled to various regular WWF venues in the United States.

The angles and characters during the early years of RAW still had a healthy dose of the old WWF cartoon style. For instance, there were moments such as Irwin R. Schyster tearing up Tatanka's headdress, the various "Undertaker sightings"; or in characters like Duke "The Dumpster" Droese or Thurman "Sparky" Plugg (aka Bob Holly).

In 1995, WCW began airing its new wrestling show, Monday Nitro, live each week. RAW and WCW Monday Nitro went head-to-head for the first time on September 11, 1995. On several occasions, World Championship Wrestling head Eric Bischoff, who was also an on-air personality, gave away the results of WWF's taped RAW shows on the live WCW show (a tactic that backfired when they announced Mick Foley's first WWF title victory, causing half a million viewers to switch to RAW to see it). Under this pressure, WWF started presenting RAW live each week, and continued doing so even after the demise of WCW. Although RAW 's sister show, SmackDown!, has had a few live shows, it has never been continually aired live.

Though ratings were poor early on, WCW Nitro improved in mid-1996 and went on to draw better ratings than the WWF for 84 continuous weeks, lasting until April 13, 1998, when a heated confrontation between the villainous WWF Chairman Vince McMahon and fan favorite Stone Cold Steve Austin shifted momentum in the WWF's favor.

On February 3, 1997, Monday Night RAW went to a two hour format, as the "Attitude" era was starting to come in full stream in the WWF. By this time, RAW was hosted by Vince McMahon, Jim Ross, and Jerry "The King" Lawler In an attempt to break the momentum of what had turned into ratings domination by WCW's competing Monday Nitro, Extreme Championship Wrestling was brought in as Jerry Lawler "challenged" ECW on February 17, 1997. The "challenge" answered on the following week's show with Taz, Mikey Whipwreck, Sabu, Tommy Dreamer, D-Von Dudley, and Sandman. A week later, ECW owner Paul Heyman did a call-in to RAW the and interview the week after that.

Throughout 1997, there were more and more controversial elements in RAW and WWF programming such as the Nation of Domination, and the D-Generation X "racial graffiti" angle designed to "implicate Bret Hart's 'Hart Foundation'", and the "XXX Files" series. On March 10, 1997, Monday Night RAW officially became RAW is WAR. The opening featured a rendition of Marilyn Manson's "Beautiful People." The March 17, 1997 episode featured a heated hot Bret Hart-Vince McMahon ringside altercation (that unknowingly foreshadowed events in November) with profanity normally unheard on TV. Brian Pillman did a series of "XXX Files" segments with Terri Runnels, which pushed the envelope and then some. These segments ended prematurely with the September 29, 1997 episode of RAW, after the death of Pillman due to hereditary heart problems and drug use that next weekend.

RAW pre brand extention

[[Image:Wwfmondaynightrawlogo.jpeg|right|thumb|The original WWF Raw was originally used from 1993-1995

RAW gains ground

After WrestleMania XIV in March 1998, the WWF regained the lead in the Monday Night Wars with its new WWF Attitude brand, led in particular by rising stars Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock and Mankind. The classic feud between McMahon (who was re-imagined and re-branded as the evil company chairman character Mr. McMahon) and Austin (who, ironically, had been released by Bischoff in the summer of 1995 for not being marketable) caught the imaginations of fans. The April 13, 1998 episode of RAW, headlined by a match between Austin and McMahon, marked the first time that WCW had lost the head-to-head Monday night ratings battle in the 84 weeks since 1996. WCW attempted to counter this by dividing the nWo into the Hogan-led heel nWo Hollywood faction and the Nash-led face nWo Wolfpac faction, but many felt that it was a poor rehash of the original WCW vs. nWo storyline. Undeterred, WCW also launched a new Thursday TV show, WCW Thunder, around this time.

While RAW was taking a new approach to programming, Nitro would start producing lackluster shows with the same storylines. Older stars such as Hogan and Nash frequented the main events, while younger talent such as Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero were not given opportunities to advance in the company. Hogan and the rest of the nWo almost never lost and the once-elite group was now bloated in size and recruiting midcard wrestlers. Few new stars were made during the run of Hogan and the nWo storyline. The only newcomer elevated to main event status at this time was Goldberg. His main event match with Hogan on an edition of Nitro won the ratings battle from the WWF for the week, but Goldberg's victory was anti-climactic and little was done on Nitro to build on Goldberg's victory and reign as World Champion. Plus, some observers felt that WCW should've saved the Goldberg/Hogan match for an eventual pay-per-view event.

Meanwhile, on RAW, fans were immersed in the feud between WWF owner Vince McMahon and Stone Cold Steve Austin. New talent such as Triple H and his D-Generation X faction, Mankind and The Rock were elevated to main event status on the WWF's program. Things got so heated between the two programs, D-X was sent to Atlanta to film a segment near Turner's headquarters for a "war" storyline that was done when both shows were in the same area on the same night— RAW in Hampton, Virginia and Nitro in nearby Norfolk, sending D-X to the Norfolk Scope arena Nitro was broadcasting from and berating WCW fans.

Eric Bischoff's "tried & true" tactic of giving away the results from taped RAW shows backfired on January 4, 1999. Mick Foley, who had wrestled for WCW during the early 1990s as Cactus Jack, won the WWF Title as Mankind on RAW. Nitro announcer Tony Schiavone sarcastically mentioned "that'll sure put some butts in the seats." The moment that Schiavone insulted Foley, over 600,000 viewers changed channels to watch RAW. The next week, and for months after, many fans in the RAW audience brought signs which read, "Mick Foley put my ass in this seat!" In the meantime, while Foley's title win was airing, Nitro was highlighted by the now-infamous "Fingerpoke of Doom", a WCW Title match in which Nash, who had won the championship belt from Goldberg at the StarrCade PPV event (WCW's equivalent to the WWF's WrestleMania) two weeks before, blatantly laid down for Hogan after he poked him in the chest.

Brand extension

In early to mid-2002, WWE underwent a process they called the Brand Extension. WWE divided itself into two de facto wrestling promotions with separate rosters, storylines and authority figures. RAW and SmackDown! would host each division, give its name to the division and essentially compete against each other. The split was a result of WWE (then known as WWF) purchasing their two biggest competitors, WCW and ECW.

The Brand Extension would bring about a change like nothing the WWF/WWE had seen before. Wrestlers would become show-exclusive, wrestling for their specific show only. At the time this excluded the WWE Undisputed Champion and Women's Champion, as those WWF/WWE titles would be defended on both shows. In August 2002, WWE Undisputed Champion Brock Lesnar refused to defend the title on RAW, in effect causing his title to become exclusive to SmackDown! The following week on RAW, General Manager Eric Bischoff awarded a newly instated (or reinstated) World Heavyweight Title, with a design similar to the WCW World Heavyweight Championship belt, to RAW's designated #1 contender, Triple H.

The WWE Women's Championship was, for a long time, generally accepted to be RAW-exclusive, after being mentioned in a backstage skit with then SmackDown! GM Stephanie McMahon on a 2002 edition of SmackDown! However, it was recently announced that it would now be defended on both programs.

Following the Brand Extension, a yearly "draft lottery" was instituted to exchange members of each roster and generally refresh the lineups. The 2005 WWE Draft Lottery made an especially huge impact on the show. RAW drafted several major SmackDown! stars, including WWE Champion John Cena, Kurt Angle, Carlito, who won the Intercontinental Title in his first match on RAW, the Big Show, and Rob Van Dam. But they lost Chris Benoit, Randy Orton, Muhammad Hassan (w/ Khosrow Daivari), Christian and World Heavyweight Champion Batista to the draft.

Return to USA Network

On March 10, 2005, Viacom, the parent company of Spike TV, announced that they would not seek to extend their agreement to air RAW and other WWE programming on the network when their deal expired in September 2005. [1] On April 4, 2005, WWE announced a 3-year deal with NBC Universal to bring RAW back to its former home, the USA Network, with two yearly specials on NBC and a Spanish-language RAW on Telemundo. [2] On the same week as RAW's redebut on USA, Spike TV scheduled Ultimate Fighting Championship's live Ultimate Fight Night in RAW's old timeslot in an attempt to go head-to-head with RAW.

The show's first night back on USA was billed as the "WWE Homecoming" and featured the return of former WWE Champions such as Hulk Hogan, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Mick Foley, Triple H and Vince McMahon along with cameos from legends such as Roddy Piper, Jimmy Hart, "Superfly" Jimmy Snuka, The Iron Sheik and Harley Race. The "WWE Homecoming" was three hours long — the longest an episode of RAW has ever run in its 12-year history. USA also showed RAW Exposed, an hour of the best moments of RAW during its previous run on USA. WWE announced that RAW received its highest ratings in three years, gaining close to six million viewers.

The following week, Vince McMahon "fired" Jim Ross for not helping after Steve Austin gave him and his entire family the Stone Cold Stunner. Jonathan Coachman was named as Ross' replacement, but after 2 weeks, he was replaced by former ECW announcer Joey Styles.

Since its return to the USA Network, WWE.com has hosted a new service called WWE Unlimited which streams live clips of RAW before and after the show along with clips between commercial breaks. The service has shown some exclusive segments including the heel turn of The Hurricane.

On December 5, 2005, Vince McMahon "fired" Eric Bischoff from general manager position. On December 19 2005, RAW broadcasted from Afghanistan for a specal Tribute to the Troops.

Current champions

Footnotes:

1: The WWE (WWF) Championship is currently on the RAW brand after John Cena was drafted from SmackDown! on June 6, 2005

2: The original WWE Intercontinental Championship was discontinued on October 20, 2002 until May 18, 2003, when it was reintroduced by Stone Cold Steve Austin at WWE Judgment Day 2003.

Recurring segments

In addition to wrestling matches and backstage vignettes, RAW has also aired several recurring segments as part of its program. In 2003, Chris Jericho's "Highlight Reel" was the RAW equivalent of the "Piper's Pit" segments airing on SmackDown! at that time. Also in that year, Rodney Mack and Theodore Long hosted the "White Boy Challenge", a five minute time-limit challenge for any white wrestler to beat Mack. The challenge was eventually ended by Goldberg in the same year. 2004 saw the addition of an annual RAW Diva Search. The next year, 2005 WWE newcomer Chris Masters introduced the "Masterlock Challenge" soon after his debut.

The 2005 draft brought Kurt Angle and his "Kurt Angle Invitational" to the show, which was briefly turned into Eugene's "Eugene Invitational". Carlito brought his interview segment "Carlito's Cabana" from SmackDown! to RAW as well. In the same year, Rowdy Roddy Piper made two guest appearances hosting a special edition of his interview segment "Piper's Pit" in which he interviewed Shawn Michaels and Mick Foley in separate segments. In December of that year, Edge launched The Cutting Edge, replacing the Cabana as RAW's interview segment.

General managers and "owners"

1 These three were made General Managers of RAW for one night only by Eric Bischoff.

2 These four had a one-time-only opportunity at General Manager when their team won at Survivor Series 2004, while full-time General Manager Eric Bischoff was on vacation.

3 Upon the firing of Eric Bischoff, Vince McMahon assumed control of Monday Night RAW, pending the institution of a replacement.

See also

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