CB’s World: Why Vince McMahon Should End Three-Hour Episodes of Monday Night Raw

Columns, Top Story

Tonight on another laborious three-plus hour episide of WWE Monday Night Raw, there are two key WWE figures making appearances that signal the pushing of the panic button over at Titan Towers due to poor TV ratings last week from the flagship show: 1. Vince McMahon will be on Raw tonight to presumably do one of his “state of the WWE” addresses while interacting with the regular roster to give them some new life (or to fire them, which could be the case for embattled Raw General Manager AJ Lee); and 2. John Cena — who is recovering from elbow surgery — has VOWED to be back on Raw this week so he can talk things out with the WWE Universe, because God forbid the show ever goes on without him longer than one week.

The problem with playing the Vince and Cena cards here is that neither of these appearances will solve the problem: Raw is just too damn long. I’m sorry Vince, but it just seems like you haven’t learned from the past mistakes that were made by WCW when Nitro became a bloated, barely watchable three-hour show that overexposed the wrestlers and exposed their lack of roster depth. Hmmm, sound familiar Vin Man?

As for Cena, well, what can I say that hasn’t already been said? He’s coming back way too early (again) to erroneously add more talking time to a show that desperately needs more actual wrestling over the course of its 180-195 minutes of airtime than we’ll ever get to see, which will only make more and more people tune out since everybody is merely “running in place” all the time now in WWE.

I don’t know, I just don’t see what kind of instant shakeup that Vince can pull out of his arse tonight to right this sinking Titanic-sized ship known as Raw, unless he cuts his losses right now and chops an hour off the block while also refocusing the entire show somehow, some way.

Let me conclude this week’s proceedings with this: In New York City’s last mayoral election, there was a guy who ran against Bloomberg under the “My Rent Is Too Damn High” party. Well, I say we all band together like Heath Slater, Jinder Mahal and Drew McCintyre and form a new parallel faction: The ‘My Raw Is Too Damn Long’ party.

All we have to do to succeed is find other things to do from 8-11:15 pm ET instead of watching the USA Network. It’s not that hard, actually, just ask the millions of people who do it every week, or the hundreds of thousands who have recently made the switch.

And if Vince isn’t careful, the WWE Universe he built up on Monday nights will start to seriously crack, and this could cause the entire thing to crumble.

Just ask Ted Turner.

That’s all from me — CB.

CB is an Editor for Pulse Wrestling and an original member of the Inside Pulse writing team covering the spectrum of pop culture including pro wrestling, sports, movies, music, radio and television.