PWTorch.com - MCNEILL'S TAKE: An Inexpensive Way To Make Raw More Exciting a/k/a Let's See What WCW Did in the 1990s

MCNEILL'S TAKE
MCNEILL'S TAKE: An Inexpensive Way To Make Raw More Exciting a/k/a Let's See What WCW Did in the 1990s

Oct 20, 2014 - 10:12:02 AM

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By Pat McNeill, PWTorch columnist

WWE’s Monday Night Raw show used to be an hour long. Then it went to two hours. Then, it was two hours with an overrun. Now, Raw lasts three hours and five minutes every week, with a 30-minute pre-show on WWE Network. Even people who work for World Wrestling Entertainment think a weekly live three-hour flagship program is too much. If WWE wasn’t being paid handsomely by NBC Universal, the promotion never would have expanded Raw to three hours on its own.

So, it’s worth asking. Is there a way to successfully run three-hour television shows every week? Or, the seven hours of first-run wrestling WWE puts out every week? I don’t know. But there *is* a precedent for this sort of thing. Back in 1998, World Championship Wrestling was pumping out a three-hour episode of Nitro every Monday, two hours of WCW Thunder on Thursday night, and two more hours of the WCW Saturday Night program on TBS.

How did WCW manage to churn out seven hours of wrestling every week while keeping things fresh? They didn’t. They went out of business three years later. But while WCW was pulling it off, in 1998, they were doing it with wrestling matches. Lots and lots and lots of wrestling matches.

I went back and looked at the final week of February 1998, just long enough into the seven-hour era to establish a routine. Nitro went three hours and featured twelve matches, with nobody working twice. Thunder had seven matches and a battle royal. WCW Saturday Night, the third tier show, had ten matches, and six of them were squash matches.

I was going to suggest WWE follow suit by putting out an hour of squash matches each week. Then I watched Main Event last Tuesday. Rusev vs. Big E. Langston? Cesaro vs. Justin Gabriel? As usual, the McMahons were way ahead of me.

But the biggest difference here was the size of the roster. WCW used fifty-eight different wrestlers to tape a week’s worth of television matches. Right now, WWE doesn’t have fifty-eight healthy wrestlers on its main roster.

I realize the company has taken some financial hits in 2014, but World Wrestling Entertainment needs to increase the number of wrestlers on its main roster, and let some of these men and women fill television time. Will we get some people out there who aren’t ready for prime time? Yes, that’s possible. But part of the ratings malaise is that wrestling fans are getting tired of watching the same wrestlers have the same matches and same feuds week in and week out.

WWE is not going to revive its fortunes with the same group of top wrestlers it has been using. Roman Reigns will be back, as will Wade Barrett and (hopefully) Daniel Bryan. But all of the boom periods in wrestling came about because promotions created new stars. It’s time for WWE to get busy.