Welcome to another eWrestlingNews Question of the Day!
32 years ago on January 11, 1993, the very first episode of WWE Monday Night Raw took place at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York. Since then, it’s been the most important piece of programming for World Wrestling Entertainment outside of WrestleMania—and an argument can be made for that, too.
As much as SmackDown has gained steam over the years and truly cemented itself as the #2 show, with NXT and ECW and others filling in that #3 spot, as well as plenty others mulling around (NXT Level Up, Main Event, Mixed Match Challenge, Speed, 205 Live, Velocity, Shotgun Saturday Night, Heat, etc etc etc), it still always reverts back to SmackDown as the runner-up silver medalist and Raw at the top of the mountain.
But is that something that should always be the case, or is there room for change?
My question for you today is “Should WWE always make Raw the flagship show no matter what, or do you have a different mindset?”
Remember to answer with your response in the comments below.
Want the short answer? Yes. But I’ll elaborate.
Institutions are hard to come by. You need not only longevity, but success in that longevity to the point that people recognize something as THE thing. Raw long ago reached the point of that being the definitive WWE television show. Why would you throw that away and diminish it for any reason whatsoever when you’ve built up something that is damn near impossible to achieve?
Obviously, if the word “raw” were to somehow get a negative connotation behind it, then WWE would have to consider changing over to something else. For instance, you’re probably going to be more hesitant to name your kid Karen now that that’s become a way to describe entitled women complaining to see the manager. If the word raw suddenly took on a meaning of something that meant terribly lame or racist or anything of that sort, then I’m sure we’d see it renamed.
But barring that, Raw should always be more commonly treated like the bigger program even when SmackDown is supposed to be on equal footing. The blue brand has 3 hours now, but they are on USA while Raw is on Netflix, effectively allowing them to catch up for 1 week before the red brand once again took a step forward that SmackDown can’t do.
Think of it like the world titles. WWE has never done a good job of this, but in theory, the top championship on Raw and SmackDown should be worth the same. There were some times where SmackDown’s top title (be it the WWE Championship, World Heavyweight Championship of the past or the current era, or the Universal Championship) was the top storyline, and other times where it was defaulted to Raw’s champion in the main event. But at the end of the day, we all know that if WWE had to merge titles, they’d continue the lineage of the WWE Championship, as that’s still the most important. Likewise, if WWE had to suddenly cancel all programs other than one television show per week, they’d have more bargaining power and more investment to keep Raw going forward as the only WWE show, while SmackDown would have to be canned.
While there will always be times where SmackDown is the more entertaining show or even has the bigger stars, I can’t think of a scenario where I’d want WWE to put that above Raw in the overall scale of importance—which is surprising as I much more prefer blue over red and I like the name SmackDown more than Raw, but I come baked into WWE as a fan pretty much right when Raw was getting started, so I don’t ever want to change that, either. Nostalgia for the win!
What do you think? Drop your thoughts below!