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The Official UKFF RAW thread (part 2)...


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  • 3 weeks later...

Amazing that Randy Orton’s magic cheek wasn’t the biggest plot hole on this show.

I still don’t know why Keith Lee and Sheamus fell out or why Drew and Goldberg are feuding. Why’s Lacey boffing Ric?

I didn’t hate the show per se, it was just very sloppily written.

Omos is tremendous, and AJ Styles is great.

I’ve been trying to watch more wrestling this year, and have taken in WWE, NJPW, AEW and Impact so far. Hands down, Riddle is the worst character I’ve seen across all those shows. Fucking awful.

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The Ric Flair deal was the best thing on the show for at least being something that actually happened. Raw in particular is absolutely terrible for somehow producing three hours of television with little to no storyline or character advancement.

Unbelievable they still flew Ric in after another COVID outbreak though. The amount of people working double duty on this show, it’s obvious it’s not just Drew who’s got it.

Edited by Supremo
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Is the Ric Flair stuff a reponse to USA Network supposedly asking for more adult content?

I've only read up but it seems strange (or it would if it was anyone else booking this stuff) that CEO Tripper said he was fine with Orton burning someone alive but drew the line at him insulting legends.

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It’s scary just how much of a contrast there is between all 3 weekly shows, NXT and Smackers are streets ahead of Raw and that’s partially down to the insistence of that 3rd hour.

The solution is looking at all parties smack dab in the face but both seem stubborn, and that is have the 3rd hour be the Raw Talk show. That way Vince and the writers get to book a two hour show the same way they do SD for FOX and Trips team do for NXT and USA get their 3rd hour of content for the ratings 

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Contrast in using the time on Raw and Smackdown is a big issue.

Raw for some reason struggles to get guys on TV weekly or stretches out matches and angles to take up time, for example Ryker beating Hardy with quick roll up was fine as it served its purpose but then they had Hardy Vs Elias in a longish match, lots of matches go too long on all shows including AEW aswell.

Smackdown seems to fly by and has no time for Rey, Dom, Murphy, Aleister Black to name a few, such a weird balance that they're struggling to get right.

Never used to be an issue but now it's really obvious

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Why is Raw still 3 hours? I know that's what USA paid for and in theory, another hour is valuable, but the ratings are so low that surely it's getting to the point where it's just hurting the previous two hours.

That said, they have to be careful. Remember WCW losing an hour of Nitro being seen as the answer to their problems by Russo. ratings very quickly reverted to the same for two hours as they were for three, meaning they'd just lost a ton of money for nothing.

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1 hour ago, tiger_rick said:

I've only read up but it seems strange (or it would if it was anyone else booking this stuff) that CEO Tripper said he was fine with Orton burning someone alive but drew the line at him insulting legends.

I've only read up too, but I found that a particularly strange use of the moral compass.

26 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

Why is Raw still 3 hours? I know that's what USA paid for and in theory, another hour is valuable, but the ratings are so low that surely it's getting to the point where it's just hurting the previous two hours.

That said, they have to be careful. Remember WCW losing an hour of Nitro being seen as the answer to their problems by Russo. ratings very quickly reverted to the same for two hours as they were for three, meaning they'd just lost a ton of money for nothing.

We must be long past the point of people thinking "I'd watch Raw every week if it was only two hours", mustn't we? That ship has to have sailed. I'd maybe give it a watch if it was one hour, but even then it's only maybe. I think that WCW example is more likely to happen than ratings climbing again if they cut time.

Edited by HarmonicGenerator
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30 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

Why is Raw still 3 hours? I know that's what USA paid for and in theory, another hour is valuable, but the ratings are so low that surely it's getting to the point where it's just hurting the previous two hours.

That said, they have to be careful. Remember WCW losing an hour of Nitro being seen as the answer to their problems by Russo. ratings very quickly reverted to the same for two hours as they were for three, meaning they'd just lost a ton of money for nothing.

Considering how good their behind the scenes/online content is I don't know why they don't just change the third hour format completely. They have the talent and resources to do it. Use that third hour to... make movies *gulps water*.

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The most galling thing is that, on a three hour show, they had Jeff Hardy, Keith Lee, Sheamus and Riddle all work double duty, on top of the people appearing in multiple backstage segments. Three hours and, under current circumstances, they clearly either don't have the roster to fill it, or simply choose not to (it sounds like they had people appearing in backstage segments but not wrestling - which raises another question of why they're bringing people in for shows they're not wrestling on in the middle of a pandemic).

I've talked for years about how much they need to change up their presentation, and in a weird way the pandemic should have been the excuse they needed to do so, rather than forcing an uncanny valley fake audience on to the same fucking show as ever. They could be doing vignettes, promos on location, wrestlers sending promos in from home, anything but the same old same old. There's no reason that hours one, two and three need to look identical to one another, particularly when there's no sodding audience. 

Even if you assume that the TV network doesn't want them changing up the multiple hour format, or doing hour one as a lead-in show with minimal wrestling or anything like that, they could pace it better, they could not book the same blokes to wrestle twice in a row three times on the same show! 

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15 minutes ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

I've only read up too, but I found that a particularly strange use of the moral compass.

We must be long past the point of people thinking "I'd watch Raw every week if it was only two hours", mustn't we? That ship has to have sailed. I'd maybe give it a watch if it was one hour, but even then it's only maybe. I think that WCW example is more likely to happen than ratings climbing again if they cut time.

I'd definitely give it a go, mostly because I do think Smackdown works really well, and I'd be curious just to see whether the time thing was as much of an issue as I've been thinking it is.

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20 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Considering how good their behind the scenes/online content is I don't know why they don't just change the third hour format completely. They have the talent and resources to do it. Use that third hour to... make movies *gulps water*.

That's actually another WCW-ism. When Kevin Nash took the book in 1999, they turned the first hour into a bunch of bad sketches. It killed ratings which was especially astonishing because the first hour was the one that wasn't up against Raw so was perviously the one with the most eyes on it and a lead in to the rest of the show.

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