Monday Night Raw is WWE’s flagship show as it’s been airing since January 11, 1993 and has aired more than 1400 episodes.
But it’s hit a few snags in the road lately as WWE Creative has, to put it nicely, dropped the ball big time.
The show is now on equal footing with WCW Nitro from 2000 and we all know how that worked out. In fact, the USA network has been reportedly upset with the WWE for the lack of engaging storylines on Raw for a while now.
And more times than not, Raw looks more like something slapped together at the last minute to fill three hours when it would probably be best to cut it back to two.
B level show
Fans and critics aren’t the only ones to notice the show’s slipped from its once lofty heights as Paul Heyman did an interview with BT Sport and shared his thoughts on the show.
To be fair, he’s most likely talking in character, but there’s more than some truth to what he said, in our opinion.
Special thanks to cultaholic.com for the transcript.
”There is no rivalry, SmackDown has beaten the s*** out of Raw. Raw is clearly the B Show. There is no more competition. We won. I have no bitterness towards Raw. If Raw goes sour, it hurts SmackDown. If Raw goes sour, it hurts WWE. It hurts the stock. The stock goes sour, it hurts me personally.
“I don’t want Raw to do bad. I wish Raw would do even better and provide stiffer competition to SmackDown. If a star emerges on Raw that Roman Reigns can draw box office with? We have another opponent. The problem with Roman Reigns is not the limit of his greatness. Roman’s greatness gets more defined as every performance is put forth.”
“The problem with Roman Reigns is we have such a limited number of people that we can viably and actually work with that people will look at and say, ‘That’s an opponent for Roman Reigns, that’s someone I’d like to see challenge the Tribal Chief. That’s why Brock Lesnar’s return is so huge. We don’t have five other people waiting in the wings that automatically step up and can be a credible opponent for Roman Reigns.”
Lack of build
While Heyman’s obviously pushing Reigns as one of the greatest ever, along with speculated WWE promo plans, he’s not wrong.
The WWE has been horrible about building up other stars and when they do they disappear shortly afterwards for one reason or another.
We’ve seen extraordinary talents like Bray Wyatt, Aleister Black, and Murphy sent packing despite fan approval. Keith Lee was repackaged and then released and the list goes on and one.
And then there’s the storytelling that feels disjointed and unoriginal coming and going.
Currently, the only true viable for Reigns after Brock Lesnar is Drew McIntyre, and the Rock will most likely appear after his feud with Reigns.
Raw had a few blips of hope here and there, but lately it’s been the same thing week after week and both shows repeat the same tricks to get fans involved.
What do you think about Heyman’s comments? Is Raw the B show for the WWE and will it turn things around in the future?
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