The October 7 edition of WWE Monday Night Raw was the first iteration of the show to go back to 2 hours in years. Fans have long called for this shift to happen, but there were concerns going into the night as to what would change from its standard three-hour version. Now that the show has come and gone, here are three takeaways from how WWE Raw may look for the remainder of 2024.
WWE Raw featured a ten-woman tag team match on the show. Katana Chance, Kayden Carter, Lyra Valkyria, Natalya, and Zelina Vega defeated Shayna Baszler, Sonya Deville, Zoey Stark, Alba Fyre, and Isla Dawn. This booking was immediately compared to the days of WWE Divas when all the women were stuffed into one match to get them all on television. This match went just over seven minutes and didn’t really advance any angles for anyone involved.
This cannot be the standard going forward. A big issue is that the entrances took up the first segment of the match. WWE fans will not accept seeing the ladies get their time cut in such a dramatic fashion.
WWE Raw featured four matches. Two went longer than ten minutes while two were much shorter. The Jey Uso versus Xavier Woods match went 6:35 seconds, coming to a sudden end when Woods was caught with a superkick then a big splash. This is an opportunity for WWE to add variety to how matches are ended and bringing them to a quick but dramatic end has its benefits. It will be interesting to see if more matches finish quickly with performers finding unique ways to hit their signature moves.
One of the biggest complaints coming out of the two-hour Raw is that the pacing felt odd and there were a lot of commercials within. WWE has its advertising obligations to hit, so fans should expect the number of commercials to remain the same. Just because there’s an hour less of programming, doesn’t mean WWE was going to remove a big chunk of advertising, at least it does not appear that way so far.
Fans also commented on the pacing feeling off in many of the segments. The opening segment featured CM Punk, Seth Rollins, and Jey Uso heading into a match. Perhaps fans can expect to see how WWE better utilizes the opening and if long promos or backstage segments are cut throughout the weeks to come.
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