There are currently talks between The WWE and Fox about possibly extending the length of Smackdown Live! to 3 hours when the show moves to Fox in October which would not only end the 17 year brand split, but further kill the current WWE product.
Ever since The USA Network threw an extra $50 million at WWE that made them extend the length of RAW to 3 hours back in July 2012, the show has since gotten much worse and has recorded some of the lowest ratings ever like the 1.78 rating during The New Year’s Eve edition of RAW last year. RAW being for 3 hours has been universally panned by many wrestling fans on social media, YouTube, podcasts, blogs, and articles and it also appears that Smackdown Live! will also be extended to 3 hours which would be extreme overkill.
Here are top 5 reasons why many wrestling fans hate the 3 hour RAW.
1. Too Much Filler Content - One of the biggest reasons why the current WWE product is extremely bad is due to the oversaturation of filler content on the main roster. And that’s no evident than on RAW where you see meaningless filler segments such as “A Moment Of Bliss” and meaningless filler matches such as Apollo Crews vs Jinder Mahal. Forcing the filler garbage down the throats of wrestling fans by WWE is one of the biggest reasons why many of them either change the channel or they just simply stop watching WWE all together.
2. Horrendously Overscripted Promos - Another one of the biggest reasons why many wrestling fans hate the 3 hour RAW is due to the fact that many of the promos that happen on RAW are absolutely atrocious because they’ve been so overscripted to death. An example of this is when Nia Jax badly botched a line in her promo early this year when she told Sasha Banks that she was a “300 ounce Samoan woman” and when I saw that clip on YouTube, I went, “WTF?!?”. Note: 300 ounces = 19 pounds. These overscripted promos are absolutely detrimental to The WWE and especially RAW.
3. Repetitive Matches - One of the main reasons as to why many wrestling fans absolutely hate the 3 hour RAW is due to the repetitive matches that happens nearly every week on RAW. An example of this is when the current RAW Tag Team Champs The Revival went up against Alister Black and Ricochet and these two teams have been battling each other nearly every week on RAW this year and it’s overkill. There were other matches on RAW that were repetitive last year such as Bayley/Sasha vs The Riott Squad & Bobby Roode/Chad Gable vs The Ascension. Repetitive matches have absolutely no substance and no resolution or payoff comes out of them at all.
4. Recycled Angles - Many wrestling fans would tell you that they’re sick of the recycled angles that WWE constantly forces down their throat. A recent example of a recycled angle is the fake arrest angle in which Becky Lynch got “arrested” a while back and then this past Monday Night on RAW, her, Ronda, and Charlotte were “arrested” and I saw the clip on YouTube and while I absolutely laughed at the segment, but it wasn’t in a good way either. Recycled angles in The WWE such as the heel authoritarian and the fake arrest angle on RAW have been absolutely done to death and it needs to be retired.
5. Shorter Attention Span - One of the last main reasons why many wrestling fans absolutely hate the 3 hour RAW is due to the fact that many wrestling fans nowadays have shorter attention spans so they just check out clips from the WWE’s YouTube page instead of watching a boring and oversaturated 3 hour RAW. Let’s be honest, many wrestling fans become mentally burned out by the time the third hour of RAW is about to start because they had to stomach over about a hour and half of the filler garbage that was forced down their throats so they immediately start to do something else like playing a video game than to watch 3 hours of RAW.
Honorable Mention: Nonsensical storylines/segments that insult the intelligence of wrestling fans.
Note: Many wrestling fans including myself have openly stated on social media, YouTube, podcasts, blogs, and articles that RAW should definitely go back to being a two hour show to eliminate all the unnecessary commercials and filler garbage that currently pollute the 3 hour RAW.
The Conclusion - The third hour of RAW is not beneficial to the quality of WWE programming when it fact, it did the complete opposite.
By Kwame Shakir
