RAW is awful right now and should revert back to 2 hours

[prophet]

RAW is seriously terrible at the moment. I watched the show last night and besides the odd good segment/match the majority of the show was trash and has been for a long time now. 3 hours is just too long and 99.9% of the time they're scraping the bottom of the barrel for whatever they can use to fill airtime, it's ridiculous. I'll raise some points from last night's show to see whether you concur with them.

1. No Brock Lesnar. When Daniel Bryan wasn't able to compete on RAW he was stripped of the title and it was pushed down our throats how RAW needs it's champion there every week but it's fine for Lesnar to not show up despite being the champion? He was mentioned briefly by Heyman but that was it, not good at all.

2. The ridiculous 'Slater Gator' thing they keep doing with Adam Rose and 'The Bunny' (who is now an actual WWE superstar apparently) isn't funny at all and makes me want to throw up whenever I see it on air. I appreciate how young kids might find this shit funny so I'll let it slide but still...trash.

3. How long do they seriously want to drag out this awful Bella Twins feud? It was somewhat tolerable when Steph was involved but they didn't even pull the trigger at Night of Champions and we're still having to suffer through one of them talking every week. Also, 3 separate Diva matches on RAW? Really? It's like they actually want people to switch over to MNF.

4. This isn't a knock on the actual feud itself because everyone knows I'm a big fan of both men involved but yet again the show focused on the Ambrose/Rollins saga which is awesome yes, but we don't need to see short segments involving Jamie Noble and Joey Mercury running around like fools to kill a few minutes before the next match/segment. One is more than enough, we get the jist...but if you are going to have multiple segments devoted to the main story of the night...we don't need to see a fucking replay of each segment every 10 minutes.

5. Cena being forced into the Rollins/Ambrose feud is infuriating.

6. No Tag Team Champions? Goldust and Stardust win the titles but only appear on RAW in a short little video link? Why?! Surely if you have time to kill you can put the tag champs in a match as opposed to one of the 3 diva matches or Los Matadores?

7. Bray Wyatt has dropped off the face of the earth. Though he was involved in two really cool videos hyping what I assume is a singles push for Luke Harper, which I'm really excited about.

8. The show was over 3 hours long...yet literally NOTHING changed about it. The main story was pretty much EXACTLY the same as last week with Cena and Ambrose desperate to get a piece of Rollins only for Kane and Orton to stop that from happening. None of the mid-card feuds really developed either.

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I could probably go on if I really wanted too, does anyone agree with me or am I being too cynical? The definition of insanity is watching the same thing over and over again and expecting something different - watching RAW definitely makes me feel like I'm going fucking insane. Anyone else?

[Messiah]

No, you were spot-on.

When it comes to in-ring talent, the current roster may be tops in history. When it comes to actually caring about a single soul though, it is near the bottom only rivaled by the mid-90s WWF. There is no point in watching RAW because nothing changes. Bray Wyatt has beaten John Cena, Chris Jericho, and Daniel Bryan, and they all remained the same after their loss. They did not care. They moved on like nothing happened. This might be OK if it was a loss to Roman Reigns but Wyatt's character is predicated on evoking change. Wyatt said he was going to change Jericho and Jericho swiftly moved into a match at Night of Champions with Randy Orton. Daniel Bryan didn't care nor was he affected by the loss at all story-wise. We all know how the feud with John Cena turned out. Bray Wyatt is merely a small example of this, though. The way his character has been botched is one of the worst crimes in WWE history. It would take genius booking for him to recover, genius booking that at this point we all know the WWE sorely lacks.

And because of that, why should I care if Luke Harper gets pushed? Why should I care about anything they put on the show? It is the feeling every other fan gets too. When you give a guy a push and the fans begin to invest in him and every single time you change your mind, it rubs off on the audience and they take notice.

It is exactly why I can't bother with the WWE and especially not RAW. They tell the same story every week. Nothing changes. John Cena is the main culprit of this. There is nothing left to do with him. It is also why Roman Reigns will fail too once he gets to the top. They already gave his match with Seth Rollins away on free television, an absolutely moronic decision. It is clear as day right now Reigns is limited on the microphone and the WWE struggles with hiding an individuals weakness - hell, they allow the Bella's to speak every week! Vince McMahon is driving the show into the ground and I can only figure that the WWE Network will continue to fail because they do not know how to market it.

As for the length of the show, I have said since Day 1 it was a mistake. In my opinion, Breaking Bad is the single greatest TV show of all-time. However, I can only shudder to think if that was two years while keeping the same amount of episodes. And that is Breaking Bad, a show with a far superior creative mind than the one Vince McMahon possesses nowadays. They are so poor at building up new stars that they are unable to keep anyone thoroughly entertained for 3 hours.

The product reminds me of '00 WCW in a way. That might be a stretch but I would go ahead and compare the situations anyway. The WWE is trying to transition and build up a "New Generation" but as @Hanley! said in another thread, they are just failing miserably at it. And once all the part-timers gather up for their big WrestleMania payday, it will only get worse.

[Everlong]

The analogy "butter scraped over too much bread" from Lord of the Rings seems to be an apt description of this problem. WWE has the pieces in place to have a successful product, but by trying to spread the show out over three hours they're pushing far past their capabilities. It's far better to have a very good two hour show than a mediocre three hour show, and yet somehow they haven't seemed to realize this yet.

Of course, that's completely glossing over the endless list of problems with booking and talent management that the company has, which Prophet and Messiah have already gone into but have barely even scratched the surface. But yeah... three hours is a long time for a show, and they clearly have problems creating enough interesting content to fit within that time slot.

[Str8Shooter]

Didn't WCW start to take a nosedive around the time that they expanded Nitro to 3 hours? I forget when they did but I think it was 1998. It's such a long time to watch a show, I mean if any popular show, whether it was Breaking Bad or anything was on for 3 hours straight every week I have to imagine the quality would dip drastically.

[axis]

heh, I actually liked last nights episode.

No Brock - it increases his draw power by not having him appear every week. Daniel Bryan wasn't stripped (kayfabe wise) because he couldnt defend the title at Raw, it was because he wouldnt be able to wrestle for a few months. Brock at this point has wrestled at the 1 PPV since he won the title - pretty perfect record so far. That being said, even if he doesnt wrestle at Hell in the Cell, it wouldn't be the worst thing.

Slator Gator - I think its pretty lame entertainment, and i hate that corny stuff normally. I dont care for Adam Rose, but Raw needs its comedy bits, so I just keep thinking it could be worse.

Bella Twins - spot on, terrible crap.

I think Noble and Mercury add something extra to the Authority/Ambrose feud. Remember Paterson and Briscoe? They were gold when Austin was taking on McMahon.

Cena in the Authority feud - Don't care for, and wish it weren't so.

Golddust had time off over the weekend, so not too worried about the champs not being there. They work very hard, and most weeks, so happy to have a small break.

Harper getting a push = good thing.

Zigler, Miz, Cesaro was awesome.

The beat down on Cena and Ambrose was good.

Paul Heyman segmant was good.

Mark Henry beating up on Bo was good.

AJ Lee and Paige storyline got pushed along.

Big Show with Rusev was meh, but I hope it leads to Big Show putting him over.

3 Hours doesnt bother me so much, but when an hour of it is replays it does. I'd give last nights episode 7/10. Last weeks episode was much worse.

[Westcoastvibes]

I don't think the 3 hours are the problem it's how they fill these 3 hours. We get constant replays of what just happened 10 minutes prior. Stupid backstage segments with no meaning, dragged on feuds for the shameless self promotion of another show on a different network and so on. If it was filled with entertainment than it would be better