Sports. Honestly. Since 2011

How to Fix Monday Night Raw

Ryan Smith, the Raw guy for Last Word on Pro Wrestling, breaks down how WWE can fix Monday Night Raw before it's not late.

As anyone who is familiar with LastWordOnProWrestling.com already knows, I’m the Monday Night Raw guy. Every single week, I sit down with a crappy cup of coffee and watch all three hours, grading every segment. Some shows are good, some shows are bad, but come winds of change, Roman Reigns, or Al Snow, I cover Raw every week. The show isn’t always awful, bu it could be better, here’s how WWE can fix Monday Night Raw.

How to Fix Monday Night Raw

Stephanie McMahon

This is not a secret to anyone who watches Monday Night Raw. Stephanie McMahon is not good for the show. We’ve discussed her impact before, but here’s a quick recap.

When it comes to storytelling, in and outside of the ring, you need a good bad guy. You need someone that will be easy to hate, so that you’ll pay good money to see someone give them what they deserve. In order to sell tickets, you need a knight to slay a dragon.

You know what show you don’t watch? The one where the dragon just eats all the villagers and burns the castle to the ground. Okay, maybe you watch that once, because that sounds awesome. But you don’t watch it for three hours every single week, and watching Stephanie McMahon emasculate talent is nowhere near as entertaining as an actual dragon.

Unless one of the Women’s wrestlers starts a feud with her, leading to a match where she gets beaten, having her emasculate male talent every week is not improving the show. And also, when you have a heel authority figure, you’re subconsciously conditioning your audience to boo your backstage authority as well. Need proof? Nobody complains about her brother, brother.

Finish Him!

Finishes on Monday Night Raw are atrocious. Every single week, multiple matches end with or with help from interference. Why get invested in a match when you know that Braun Strowman is going to come screw things up? I mean, I understand why they think it’s a good idea.

If Roman Reigns and Samoa Joe are wrestling, and you can’t afford creatively, for either to lose, introducing Strowman protects both men. It’s not Reigns’ fault that he was distracted, and Joe gets a clean win. Everyone goes home happy.

There’s an easy metaphor for this situation. Introducing interference into the match is like a famous M. Night Shyamalan plot twist. Every now and then, in movies like The Sixth Sense and Signs? Fine. But in every single movie you ever make, from elevators in villages, people will stop coming to the movie theatre.

Why should I get invested in this Kevin Owens match when I know Chris Jericho is going to interfere? Why should I care about a match when I know they’re just wasting time until someone comes in and renders the whole bout obsolete.

Elevate Stars

Seth Rollins, Kevin Owens, Roman Reigns, Braun Strowman, and Chris Jericho. These are the main eventers of a three hour wrestling show. On SmackDown Live? You’ve got A.J. Styles, John Cena, Dean Ambrose, The Miz, Dolph Ziggler, Baron Corbin, Randy Orton, and Bray Wyatt, all of whom could be a believable WWE Champion.

Monday Night Raw has a bigger roster, and yet it feels paper thin. Maybe it’s the third hour that does it, but there are really only four or five believable champions on Monday Night Raw. And there are guys that are talented enough to be elevated.

Two guys that instantly come to mind are Sami Zayn and Rusev. Rusev is incredible. He’s good on the microphone, despite the accent, and he has the potential to be a main event monster. And Sami Zayn is the second coming of Owen Hart. He’s the most genuinely likeable person in wrestling, and in the ring, he’s arguably the best in the WWE. Go watch his matches against Kevin Owens, Seth Rollins, Neville, or Shinsuke Nakamura for proof of that.

Benefit of the Doubt

WWE has had some rough luck with injuries, and some plots take a while to develop. Finn Balor was going to be the face of Monday Night Raw, and he got hurt in his third match on the main roster. Samoa Joe has main eventer written all over him, and it looks like he’ll get a big push. Hopefully, WWE see what they have in Sami Zayn, and they’re planning a “Daniel Bryan” push for him.

However, the WWE are sitting on a gold mine of young talent. There are about a dozen talented wrestlers that could be helping fix Raw that they don’t use every week. I’m not talking about NXT, I’m talking about the CruiserWeight division.

Cruiser-Wait

Obviously, there are plenty of guys that Vince McMahon will never put a World Championship on. I’ll bet both ears that Jack Gallagher will never be WWE Champion. But why can’t Neville be the United States Champion? Why can’t CruiserWeights wrestle other members of the main roster? Why bust out these ridiculous purple ropes and suck all the energy out of the arena. Doesn’t anyone remember the fantastic WWE World Heavyweight Championship match that Seth Rollins and Neville had two years ago? They’re just leaving money on the table.

Individual Feuds

Right now, Monday Night Raw is a mess. It’s hard to explain what any superstar is doing because they’re feuding with everyone all the time. Literally everyone is feuding with everyone. Don’t believe me? Watch.

The Women’s Division

On Monday Night Raw, there are four wrestlers. Sure, Dana Brooke and Alicia Fox are there, but they’re not going to beat anybody or have a meaningful promo, and hey, maybe Emmalina will make a difference next week, but for now, Raw has four women wrestlers.

Sasha Banks, Bayley, Nia Jax, and Charlotte. Those are the four women on Raw and they’re all feuding with each other. Don’t believe me? You don’t have to look back far, just check out this week’s Raw.

Bayley wrestled Nia Jax because Nia Jax beat up Sasha Banks. Bayley is currently the number one contender for Charlotte’s Women’s Championship. During Bayley’s bout against Nia Jax, Charlotte came out and cost her the match. Afterwords, Charlotte went to the trainer’s room to mock Sasha Banks. See what I mean? Talk about convoluted and crowded.

Seth Rollins

We’ve covered this before, but right now, Seth Rollins is feuding with Triple H. Rollins wants revenge for Triple H screwing Rollins out of the Universal Championships in August. However, Triple H wasn’t on Raw during football season, which started two weeks after the title changed hands.

So in order to get back at Triple H, Rollins decided to go after the Universal Championship, which was held by Kevin Owens. However, every time he got close to beating Kevin Owens, his best friend Chris Jericho would show up and screw him out of the match. As a result, Rollins started feuding with Jericho.

Finally, Rollins pedigree’d Jericho for the 900th time, and he started going after Triple H more, conveniently after the regular season ended. This turned into a feud between Seth Rollins and Triple H’s wife, Stephanie McMahon.

The two bickered, and ultimately, Stephanie got Rollins removed from the Royal Rumble match. Rollins showed up at NXT to taunt Triple H, and this finally got the two men to be in the same arena at the same time, and what happened? Samoa Joe attacked him. That’s right, they introduced another character.

Unfortunately, Rollins was injured during Joe’s debut, but all reports say he’ll be back by Mania. But still. Rollins should just be feuding with Triple H. Not Kevin Owens, Chris Jericho, Stephanie McMahon, Samoa Joe, Leo Kruger, No Way Jose, and the Yeti.

Roman Reigns

For Roman Reigns, it’s even more convoluted. He’s had big staredowns with his buddy, Seth Rollins, the newest member of Monday Night Raw’s roster, Samoa Joe, the resident monster, Braun Strowman, the Universal Champion, Kevin Owens, and the dead man, the Undertaker. And that’s just the last three weeks.

If you’re on Monday Night Raw, and you have some momentum, there’s a good chance that you’re at least teasing a feud with Roman Reigns. With Reigns being booked like he’s about to turn heel, that’s gonna be really hard to pull of, as most of those guys are heels already.

Braun Strowman

Braun Strowman has been one of the best parts of Monday Night Raw since the brand split. If you told me that after the draft, I would’ve laughed in your face. However, for the most part, Raw’s big man has been booked really well. He hasn’t been pinned, and he looks basically unbeatable. But just like Reigns and Rollins, he’s feuding with everyone.

He’s feuding with Mick Foley because he can’t get real competition. He’s feuding with Roman Reigns because… Raw’s main event scene is really thin? And they’re still teasing the feud with Sami Zayn to the point where I don’t know if it’s really over. Strowman is a risk to show up and ruin any match via interference, and he usually does at least once per week.

Contender System

One thing that SmackDown does so much better than Raw is they make the contenders clear. They’ll have matches, tournaments, and open challenges that determine who deserves a title shot. On Raw? It’s absolutely nonsensical, and the current number one contender proves that.

Bill Goldberg, who has wrestled exactly one singles match in the last decade has a championship opportunity. Not for the United States Championship, mind you, but for the Universal Championship, which is allegedly the most important on Raw. Goldberg basically showed up, goaded Owens and Jericho, and now he’s going to win the Championship at FastLane.

I hear you, Goldberg is a big deal, and that one win was the destruction of Brock Lesnar. Fine, but what about everyone else that’s gone after the championship? Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns are the only two viable contenders Owens has had over the last half of a year. Over that same span, A.J. Styles, Dean Ambrose, Dolph Ziggler, Baron Corbin, and John Cena have all been involved in the WWE Championship hunt, and as a result, the prestige of that belt is at an all-time high.

The WWE need to create a system where people can earn shots at the United States and Universal Championships instead of people demanding them and then Stephanie McMahon and Mick Foley just make it happen. This makes the belt mean more, and you know what else? It makes matches between contenders meaningful so we don’t get another New Day vs. Shining Stars match.

Prestige

Expanding even further on that point, the Universal Championship should be the focus of the show. Go back and watch the segment where Goldberg becomes the number one contender. He didn’t come out and demand a title shot, he came out to respond to Brock Lesnar. Goldberg came out, brushed both of Raw’s singles champions aside like they were breadcrumbs, and accepted Lesnar’s WrestleMania challenge.

It was only after Owens mouthed off at Goldberg that WCW Monday Nitro’s biggest draw decided that he wanted the belt at FastLane. What does this say? It says that Goldberg’s feud with Brock Lesnar is more important than the Universal Championship. When you really look at Monday Night Raw as a whole, the Universal Championship is hardly the focus of the program. Their priorities go as follows.

The List of McMahonico

  1. Part-time wrestlers
  2. Roman Reigns
  3. Triple H vs. Seth Rollins
  4. Braun Strowman
  5. Stephanie McMahon emasculating Mick Foley
  6. The List of Jericho

One, two, skip a few.

99. The Universal Championship
100. The CruiserWeight Division

Perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but hardly. The WWE Championship is a huge deal on SmackDown. Even if the Universal Championship wasn’t hideous, it’s completely worthless. I’m not a fan of the idea of Lesnar or Goldberg holding the title, because they won’t be on television, but maybe that’s what it needs to be reinvented.

It probably won’t happen, but Monday Night Raw needs a face lift. They need to change things up, and if not, well, they’ll probably still makes millions and millions of dollars. But SmackDown Live will continue to be the much, much better show.

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