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On a program that plays up historic moments seemingly in every segment, the November 4 edition of WWE Monday Night Raw on USA Network was truly a landmark edition.
For the first time in history, Raw emanated from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the production thrilled the new audience. Following a terrifically produced opening video sequence featuring images of past and present WWE stars, announcers Michael Cole and Corey Graves opened the show with enthusiasm and fanfare.
I hadn’t watched a full episode of Raw in a while, but like many, I always compare the show to the Golden Age of wrestling on television. Names like Hulk Hogan, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Jimmy Snuka, The Rock, John Cena, and other fabled stars laid a spectacular groundwork in which today’s competitors thrive.
This edition of Raw opened with a look back at the recent Crown Jewel event with highlights of the various matches. As always, the production is extremely extravagant with fire, lights, various camera angles, exciting announcing, good versus evil storylines, and crowd involvement.
The production values of professional wrestling have improved greatly over the years, but the bottom line, heart and soul of the programming remains. There are wrestlers whom people like and wrestlers whom people hate. There are grudge matches, friends turned foes, unexpected upsets, expected greatness, and a bunch of really gigantic and athletic people beating the heck out of each other.
One great aspect of WWE is that the female competitors have risen to a new level of numbers, performance, athleticism, and strength heretofore unseen. With Raw, it’s all about being visual. The remarkable moves and gyrations of these athletes draw fans in and keep them there. I get it, the results are pre-determined, but let’s put that aside and just enjoy the fun.
Superstars like Cody Rhodes, Roman Reigns, and the lingering spectacle of now corporate superstar Triple H remain a big part of the Raw attraction. WWE still features the typical shots of wrestlers rolling up to the arena in limousines, and of course, the in-between match taunting from wrestlers in the ring, microphones in hand.
In this episode, superstar champion Liv Morgan delivered a great pre-match rant. Career ending threats, over-the-top predictions, and angry and arrogant announcements were the orders of the day. The women took center stage at the beginning of this edition of Raw with a Battle Royale to determine who would become the number one contender to Morgan’s title.
Cole and Graves do an excellent job of calling the action with all of the required drama, exaggeration, bombast, and commentary. They are following in the footsteps of some great wrestling announcers, headed up by Vince McMahon himself way back in the day and brought to the height of excellence by the late, great ‘Mean’ Gene Okerlund.
While the match results are canned, the athleticism, muscularity, and flexibility of these wrestlers are uncanny. From flips to roundhouse kicks, somersaults, and top rope leaps, you cannot deny the strength inherent in the competitors. In a typical Raw ending, the women’s Battle Royale came down to a dramatic clash between Tag Team Champion partners Bianca and Jade, and just as typically, outside interference ensued from rivals Valkyria and IYO SKY.
For me, one of the best parts of Raw are the interview segments. Specifically, Cathy Kelley is worthy of mention here. She does a truly outstanding job as a between-match interviewer. In short, she gets the Raw vibe. Kelley brings all of the excitement, passion, glitz, and over the top enthusiasm needed her work. The first interview of the program featured Kelley in a Q and A with Tag Team contenders The New Day.
Kelley is a popular personality as evidenced by her 857,000 followers on Instagram. Her talent and on camera presence are key reasons for Raw’s continued success. Kelley’s line of questioning taps into the emotional angst of the wrestlers, especially with The New Day, who recently lost their Tag Team Championship. Her facial expressions exemplify the kitsch drama of WWE.
With all of the off-camera drama, corporate changes, and athlete comings and goings, WWE Monday Night Raw remains a staple of sports/entertainment television. Cole and Graves do an excellent job of building up the grudge matches by showing clips and providing voice overs to previous match highlights.
As always, the strength of Raw and the WWE is the continual cultivation of provocative talent. Top tier professional wrestlers are not just athletes, they accept and embrace the fact that they are also actors. The loud and proud dissertations and speeches rev up the crowd in the arena and watching at home. These characters are truly the reason why Raw, and professional wrestling as a whole, continues the epic run it has enjoyed for decades.
The script has not changed much over the years. One wrestler emerges with fire and brimstone from backstage, runs into the ring as the crowd roars with love or disapproval. The wrestler grabs the microphone and begins orating to the crowd.
Inevitably, one or more allies or enemies emerge from backstage and join in the presentation. One of two things then happens. The long-time enemies become partners, or whoever is in the ring gets back to the aforementioned beating the heck out of each other. Either way, it makes for fascinating television for wrestling fans.
Raw provides a recurring drama with an undercurrent of courage, loyalty, and morality. The multitalented and always excellent Jackie Redmond remains a key part of the Raw team. Like Kelley, she interacts extremely well with the wrestlers she interviews. In a query with Seth Rollins, she led him down a path to boast about how amazing he is and talk about his rivalry with Bronson Reed.
Raw has its recommended daily allowance of wrestlers adorned in lavish boots, jackets, and masks such as the popular Dragon Lee. It also features more bare-bones talent like Lee’s opponent in this particular episode Chad Gable.
One complaint, I still don’t like the longtime trend of cutting to a commercial break in the middle of a match. It reinforces the artificial aspect of the sport and further lessens the credibility of the match, but that’s television, and the bills must be paid.
Lee and Gable provided some excellent wrestling action with a ton of athletic and acrobatic moves. Both of these athletes play on the top rope and feature violent suplexes onto the mat. The fun matches continued with popular wrestlers like Dominik Mysterio and Sheamus.
Of course, Raw would not be a WWE wrestling program without soap opera storylines, unfinished business between wrestlers, previews of upcoming television and live events, and promotions for other WWE productions.
In the end, however, isn’t promotion what Raw is all about? The wrestlers promote themselves on the microphone, the announcers promote the matches by calling them with flair, and Kelley and Redmond promote the rivalries by showcasing the wrestlers in interviews.
With some of the best personalities, promotions, and production values on television, WWE Monday Night Raw is still rocking in all of its colorful and incandescent glory.
