WWE Raw
| WWE Raw | |
|---|---|
| File:WWE RAW.png WWE RAW logo | |
| Created by | Vince McMahon |
| Starring | RAW Brand |
| Country of origin | United States |
| No. of episodes | 658 (as of March 20, 2006) |
| Production | |
| Running time | 1 hour, 42 minutes per episode |
| Original release | |
| Network | USA Network |
| Release | January 11, 1993 – Present |
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 and Republic of Ireland on Sky Sports. It broadcasts on tape delay in India on Ten Sports, in Portugal on SIC Radical, in Finland on SubTV, in Australia on FOX8 and in New Zealand on SKY 1. RAW is generally seen as WWE's flagship program over its sister program SmackDown! due to its longer history and its preference over SmackDown! in major pay-per-views such as WrestleMania. The program is usually two hours long. Beginning in 1997, the two hours of RAW had different names for television ratings purposes, so the WWF 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 the WWF 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 WWE is on an overseas tour.
The current theme song of RAW is "Across the Nation" by The Union Underground.
Show history
Beginning as Monday Night RAW, the program 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.
Original Format
RAW originated from the Manhattan Center, a small New York 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 twice a 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.
You must add a |reason= parameter to this Cleanup template – replace it with {{Cleanup|March 2006|reason=<Fill reason here>}}, or remove the Cleanup template.
From early 1994 to September 1999 RAW was shown live on one Monday and then the next day (Tuesday) next Monday's RAW was taped. This meant that RAW was live one week taped the next. WCW Vice President (Ted Turner being the President, however he did not get directly involed leaving the running of WCW's storylines, contracts etc to the Vice President)Eric Bischoff, took advantage of the weeks when RAW was taped by having Nitrocome on the air three minutes before RAW and giving away the taping results. He could not refer to some WWF Superstars by name due to copyright but the names he used made it easy to work out who he was refering to. For example the RAW Bowl in 1996 featured a main event between Shawn Michaels and Yokozuna in which Michaels won. Eric Bischoff said on the Nitro that aired the night of the taped RAW Bowl "If you are thinking about turning over to our so called competition the 'World Wining Federation' don't bother their show is taped Shawn Michaels beats the big sumo guy with a bad looking super kick that would not hurt anybody stay here we are live" Although some fans looked at the taping results on the growing internet many did not so this seriously hurt the ratings of the taped RAW episodes (excluding the Mick Foley WWF Title win in early 1999 when the spoiler helped the ratings, it should be noted however that WWF.COM did give away the results the Wednesday before it aired although the spoiler did have a warning stating not to read if you did not want to know what had happened.)
The original hosts of RAW were Vince McMahon, Randy "Macho Man" 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 storyline 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, although RAW did return to the Manhattan Center on February 24, 1997 for a special "ECW Invasion" edition.
The storylines 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 (a.k.a. Bob Holly).
The Monday Night War
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, WCW Vice President 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 over a half of a million viewers to switch to RAW to see it). A live television wrestling show costs about $500,000 to run so the WWF could only afford to present RAW live every week from September 1999 when thanks to ratings and PPV buy rate successes they could afford to do a weekly live show. WCW could afford to do Nitro live every week due to Ted Turner's wealth, so even when the company was losing millions of dollars in 2000 they could still afford to run Nitro live every Monday. RAW has been live each week since September 1999(bar a few expections such as when the show was held outside the United States in the UK and Japan, when the show was pre-empted on the USA Network for the Westminister Dog Show in 2006 it was not shown live in the USA but was shown live in the UK and Canada and when the show is sometimes taped alongside Smackdown! on a Sunday in what is called a WWE Supershow). Although RAW 's sister show, SmackDown!, has had a few live shows, it has never been continually aired live and is taped normally on a Tuesday.
At the start of the ratings war in 1995 though to mid-1996 RAW and Nitro would exchange victories over each over in a closely contested contest. However Monday Nitro in mid-1996 thanks to the nWo primarly went on to beat the WWF in the ratings for 83 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 the November 4, 1996 episode of Monday Night Raw, the WWF did the infamous "Pillman's got a gun" angle with Steve Austin and Brian Pillman. Austin and Pillman had been feuding for several weeks, and Austin had finally decided to take matters into his own hands and visit Pillman, whom he had already injured, at home. Meanwhile, WWF interviewer Kevin Kelly sat in Pillman's house with a camera crew and the Pillman family, while Pillman's friends surrounded the house to protect him. Austin was attacked by Pillman's friends as soon as he arrived, but soon subdued them. He then proceeded to break into Pillman's home and advance on his nemesis. Pillman responded by producing the same 9mm Glock he had displayed earlier and pointing it at a hesitant Austin, while Kelly and Pillman's wife Melanie screamed for help. The camera feed was then disrupted, with the scene fading to black. The on-scene director contacted commentator Vince McMahon and reported that he had heard "a couple explosions". The transmission was restored shortly before the end of Raw, and viewers witnessed Pillman's friends dragging Austin from the house while Pillman aimed the gun at him and announced his intention to "kill that son of a bitch!". Pillman then said to Austin "Let him go!", Pillman screamed "That son of a bitch has got this coming! Let him go! I'm going to kill that son of a bitch! Get out of the f*cking way!". The f*cking way comment was not bleeped and was clearly audible which meant that the following week the WWF had to apologized for the incident in order to remain on the USA Network. The angle earned an induction into Wrestlecrap a few years later.
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 interview to RAW 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" storyline 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 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 on October 5 due to hereditary heart problems and drug use.
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 Hulk Hogan-led heel nWo Hollywood faction and the Kevin Nash-led face nWo Wolfpac faction, but many felt that it was a poor rehash of the original WCW vs. nWo storyline. WCW also launched a new Thursday night TV show on TBS, WCW Thunder, in January 1998 to try to capitalise on the success of the past year and a half. WCW Thunder was also shown in the UK a day later following Nitro on Friday nights from March 1998 to mid-2000.
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 Kevin 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 Hulk 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 is RAW-exclusive, after being mentioned in a backstage skit with then SmackDown! GM Stephanie McMahon on a September 2002 edition of SmackDown! There has been recent speculation that it would 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 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 Gregory Helms.
On the December 5, 2005 edition of RAW, WWE Chairman, Vince McMahon held the "Trial of Eric Bischoff," with Vince himself as the judge. Ultimately, McMahon delivered his snarling trademark phrase, "YOUUUUU'RE FIIIRED!!!," effectively ending Bischoff's tenure as RAW's General Manager. Then WWE Champion John Cena aided McMahon in “taking out the trash” by delivering an F-U to the former GM. Judge McMahon himself then tossed Bischoff into a garbage dumpster and drove him out of the arena. He is expected by many backstage with WWE to be done and finished with professional wrestling.
On January 9, 2006, RAW became the first sports program to air "live sex" of Edge and Lita on the bed placed in the ring. The day after, WWE announced on their website that RAW had a 16% ratings boost from the week before, with the live sex segment being the highest rated segment of the night.
On February 16, 2006, for the first time in a few years RAW was broadcast taped in the United States on a Thursday night rather than on a Monday night. This was due to USA Network's traditional coverage of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. However, the show was shown live in Canada and the United Kingdom in their regular timeslots a few days earlier.
Logos
-
The classic Monday Night RAW logo, used from 1993 to 1997.
-
The famous RAW logo that battled WCW in the Monday Night War that was used from 1997 to 2001.
-
The former WWF RAW logo used after September 11.
-
The present WWE RAW logo that first appeared after the brand extension began.
Current champions
Footnotes:
The WWE (WWF) Championship is currently on the RAW brand after champion John Cena was drafted from SmackDown! on June 6, 2005
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. From 1993 through 1995, Jerry Lawler hosted "The King's Court", an interview segment inspired by "Piper's Pit" from years prior. In 1998, Dude Love hosted a shortlived segment entitled "Dude's Love Shack", however, when Steve Austin destroyed the set, the segment was abandoned. 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"
- Ric Flair - (Owner, March 25, 2002 - June 10, 2002)
- Vince McMahon - (Owner, June 10, 2002 - July 15, 2002; GM, December 12, 2005 - Present) 1
- Eric Bischoff - (GM, July 15, 2002 - December 5, 2005)
- Stone Cold Steve Austin - (Co-GM, April 28, 2003 - November 16, 2003)
- Mick Foley - (Co-GM, December 1, 2003 - December 15, 2003)
- Theodore Long - (GM, January 5, 2004) 2
- Jonathan Coachman - (GM, January 19, 2004) 2
- Eugene - (GM, July 5, 2004) 2
- Maven - (GM, November 15, 2004 - November 21, 2004) 3
- Chris Benoit - (GM, November 22, 2004 - November 28, 2004) 3
- Randy Orton - (GM, November 29, 2004 - December 5, 2004) 3
- Chris Jericho (GM, December 6, 2004 - December 13, 2004) 3
1 Upon the firing of Eric Bischoff, Vince McMahon assumed control of Monday Night RAW, pending the institution of a replacement.
2 These three were made General Managers of RAW for one night only by Eric Bischoff.
3 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.
Commentators
- Vince McMahon - (January 1993 - November 1997)
- "Macho Man" Randy Savage - (January 1993 - October 1993; March 1994 - October 1994)
- Rob Bartlett (January 1993 - March 1993)
- Bobby "The Brain" Heenan (March 1993 - November 1993)
- Jerry Lawler (November 1993 - November 1994; February 1995 - February 2001; November 2001 - present)
- Shawn Michaels (November 1994 - February 1995; filled in for Jerry Lawler in July 1995)
- Jim Cornette (December 1997; filled in for Jerry Lawler in April 1999)
- Jim Ross (filled in for Vince McMahon in 1994; September 1996 - December 1998; April 1999 - October 2005)
- Michael Cole (December 1998 - April 1999; filled in for Paul Heyman in July 2001)
- Paul Heyman (February 2001 - November 2001)
- Jonathan Coachman (filled in for Jim Ross occassionally from 2003 to 2005; August 2005 - present)
- Joey Styles (November 2005 - present)
WWE RAW Commentators Year-by-Year
* - Current
List of Alternate Titles
- 1993-1997 - WWF Monday Night RAW
- 1997-2001 - WWF RAW is WAR (1st hour)/WWF War Zone (2nd hour)
- 2001-2002 - WWF RAW (1st hour)/WWF RAW Zone (2nd hour)
- 2002-2004 - WWE RAW (1st hour)/WWE RAW Zone (2nd hour)
- 2004-Present - WWE Monday Night RAW
Special Episodes
- RAW Bowl - January 1, 1996
- RAW Championship Friday - September 6, 1996
- Thursday RAW Thursday - February 13, 1997
- RAW is Owen - May 24, 1999
- WWE RAW X Anniversary - January 14, 2003
- WWE Homecoming - October 3, 2005
- Tributes to Eddie Guerrero - November 14, 2005
- Tribute to the Troops - December 19, 2005