Interesting News On Why Mark Henry/Rusev Segment Was Slotted In WWE Monday Night Raw Main Event

News

Why not Cena/Lesnar confrontation?

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On WWE Monday Night Raw, the final segment was Mark Henry firing up America in the latest chapter in the USA’s feud against the nation of Russia. The segment was a strange choice to fill the main event slot, especially with the Night of Champions PPV coming up on Sunday.

The reason, as one might expect, was ratings. The NFL Monday Night Football game often bites into Raw ratings during the Fall. The real main event segment – the confrontation between John Cena and Brock Lesnar – ended up starting around 9:55PM EST. Cena talked about Paul Heyman having until “halftime” to produce Brock Lesnar in person, and while some fans assumed this was 9:30 (the halfway point of Raw), it was actually referring to the football game. WWE purposely timed this segment to coincide with halftime at the NFL game between Eagles and the Colts, going as far as to fill about 15-20 minutes with nothing but commercials and backstage segments.

This style of booking is very different from the normal cadence of Monday Night Raw. Usually the show is designed to build along the way, peaking with the final segment of the final hour. Instead, this episode peaked at the end of hour 2. The show then went into the featured matchup between Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins, before finishing up with the Henry/Rusev segment.

It remains to be seen whether this was a successful idea in the face of strong competition.

Jonathan Widro is the owner and founder of Inside Pulse. Over a decade ago he burst onto the scene with a pro-WCW reporting style that earned him the nickname WCWidro. Check him out on Twitter for mostly inane non sequiturs