Posted in: Ripped To Shreds Ripped To Shreds #16: Raw Revolution
By Ripper
Jun 9, 2009 - 2:07:27 AM
Ripped To Shreds #16: Raw Revolution
Welcome To Ripped To Shreds.
This week I’ll be discussing how Monday Night Raw has altered the course of wrestling history.
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Without further ado…
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Back in the 80’s, the main television shows for WWE were Superstars, All American Wrestling, Prime Time Wrestling, WWF Challenge, and the once a month airings of Saturday Night’s Main Event. With the exception of SNME, which did not have a huge impact on the actual development of storylines due to their frequency (save for big events that could ignite feuds to go in certain directions). These shows were based out of a studio, or a remote location in the arena where the commentators sat. The overall format for the shows was for the hosts, usually Gene Okerlund or Sean Mooney, to discuss WWE’s current events of wrestlers and their feuds. They would talk about who hated who, show interviews from wrestlers taped in front of plain backgrounds, run down the matches on the upcoming pay per view, and show matches of the superstars, usually against preliminary wrestlers, and rarely against someone they were feuding with.
Nothing big had to happen on every show. Everyone was generally just entertained by the generally slow and thorough development of the product.
Enter Monday Night Raw. The show was based out of the arena itself, with the focus being on action and excitement. While it can be argued that action and excitement wasn’t always delivered, they almost certainly tried to do just that. The show brought with it an overall feeling of “What’s going to happen next?” for the viewer. They no longer wanted to just see Shawn Michaels give an interview where he simply talked about how he was going to break the young girls’ hearts and how he loved Sherri Martel. He had to do or say something exciting. Irwin R. Shyster couldn’t just talk about how everyone was a bunch of tax cheats and actually dig up the grave of a deceased man who once wrote off something for his daughter’s birthday party as a business expense, and said that he was taking away his grave site to recompense for the tax evasion. (That seriously happened in an I.R.S. vignette.) Irwin had to have his face shoved into the Raw One Year Anniversary cake by Macho Man Randy Savage.
When WCW started increasing their number of pay per views a year, WWE increased their ppv’s as well to compete with them. With most major feuds never going past one pay per view, feuds were rushed to be developed, and with the flag ship show being Monday Night Raw, which made the developing of well done feuds to be difficult, it really made the entire product to be of an entirely different quality.
Wrestling in the 80’s was like a very good, classic novel. The characters were slowly developed, and the really big, exciting events in a feud were few and far between. You don’t expect to read about the protagonist and the antagonist going through huge events on every other page, because it just does not make for a well developed story. If there was a book that just listed crazy, thrilling events about the characters, it would probably be interesting, but it would most likely not stand the test of time.
With the birth of Smackdown, in the pre-brand split era, the WWE product moved at an incredible pace of storyline line advancements and developments. When WCW debuted Thursday Thunder, WWE eventually responded with Smackdown, which lead to the fast paced progression of the product. Things have slowed down somewhat, with the brand split making storyline advancements slow down.
The reality of the situation is that, regardless of anyone’s preferences, the wrestling world has been altered drastically over the years. It has changed dramatically, and it is a permanent alteration that is here to stay. It’s not impossible to have a well developed storyline, but it is more difficult, and the current situation lends things to “crash television”, so to speak.
Longing for the days of many long developed storylines, such as Randy Savage vs. Ric Flair (in 1992), just might not be something to hold your breath for. Shawn Michaels vs. Vince McMahon may fall under that category, but the overall product has just changed too much to see it on a regular basis.
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Thanks for reading.
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