Friday, March 29, 2024
EditorialRaw Underground First Impressions Pros & Cons of WWE's Fight Club

Raw Underground First Impressions Pros & Cons of WWE’s Fight Club

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In the everlasting attempt to pop a rating, shake things up and do something to get viewers to tune back into Monday Night Raw, WWE’s latest strategy came with something called Raw Underground.

What Is It?

To be fair, we still don’t officially know much about this. It wasn’t exactly explained in thorough detail. However, we can assume some things, based on what we’ve seen so far.

It’s a cross between the Brawl for All, the NXT Fight Pit and your standard WWE matches.

There are no ropes on the ring, which is surrounded by some dancing girls and potential fighters (which is great for COVID, right?). Seemingly at random, fights are happening with people being able to volunteer to step in the ring and go at it.

Supposedly, there are no rules. It’s definitely more inspired by MMA and other styles of fighting, as opposed to wrestling matches. Clearly, you’re not going to see dropkicks and suicide dives, as this is more about fists and take downs.

The Name

Pro: The name’s not bad. It gives off the impression of seediness and grunge, but it’s not trying too hard to sound cool. It’s not “Xtreme Blood Smash Battle Pro Club Ultimate Dark Fighters” nor is it “WWE Fyte” or something else equally ridiculous.

Con: If this catches on, how do you expand it now that it has the Raw name? You’d have to switch it over to WWE Underground, right?

Something Different

Pro: At least it’s something different. When they announced that Shane McMahon would have an interesting addition to Raw, I was expecting just another lame Wild Card Rule type idea. This shows WWE is willing to try and fail and are up for testing out oddball ideas.

Con: If someone wanted to watch MMA, they’d watch MMA. Fans of pro wrestling might consider it not what they want, either, because you’re ultimately more of a fan of WWE’s product than not, if you’re watching a WWE show. Expanding horizons and doing something new can be exciting and open up different avenues, but it also invites people criticizing it as being “not what I’m here for.”

For instance, I’m a huge James Bond fan. When they decided to go a little grittier with Daniel Craig’s films, I liked some of the changes. I also hated how they stopped having gadgets and such. I like Scrubs, not the med school spin-off. Then again, how much better is the 30-man Royal Rumble than the original 20-man version? How great of a change was it to replace Clive Revill with Ian McDiarmid in The Empire Strikes Back?

Brawl for All

Pro: It’s not Brawl for All. People shouldn’t be getting injured and being made to look like idiots.

Con: Maybe they should’ve called it Brawl for All to try to bring some prestige to that name? I’ve always liked that name and it has RAW in the first word. Plus, the fact that it is scripted instead of real means it loses value because it’s ultimately just a match with less theatrics and not an actual contest of fighters.

Shane McMahon

Pro: I like the idea of Shane McMahon as the emcee of this. He’s got some clout, being a McMahon, so I buy that this is his baby and he’d be allowed to run with the project behind the scenes (at least in a kayfabe sense). If this were run by Ric Flair, I wouldn’t believe it at all.

Con: Please, please please please, please don’t turn this into a vehicle to get Shane McMahon over. He doesn’t need to start an angle with someone where they pick on him and he has to step in the ring to fight and get his credibility back as a man or whatever. We’ve gone through enough of the Best in the World gimmick. Shane’s not going to draw millions more viewers.

The Marketing

Pro: Had WWE announced this ahead of time, people probably would have made fun of it and had a bad outlook heading into the show. By just hitting viewers with it out of nowhere, you had to form your opinions when it happened, rather than get psyched up and disappointed or turn on Raw already thinking it would be a train wreck.

Con: I already have heard from a lot of people that they didn’t bother watching Raw because they assumed it would be a terrible idea no matter what WWE announced. Some of those people might actually be interested in Raw Underground as a concept, but the general “tune in to find out the surprise” didn’t work for them.

Also, the fact that we still don’t know a lot about what Raw Underground is means people don’t have as much tangible information to hold onto. I’m not one for thinking a lack of information creates mystery that people will be super psyched about. My approach is more along the lines of explaining things so people don’t feel like they’re being teased just to keep coming back for crumbs.

On top of that, I think the less you tell people about an idea, the more it shows that you haven’t thought it out and you’re trying to figure out the specifics as you go along. I don’t trust WWE can do that well.

The Fighters

Pro: This is an opportunity to showcase some new talent. They’ve already done that with Babatunde being repackaged as Dabba-Kato. Erik and Dolph Ziggler were pretty random picks to have fight people, but I’m down with that. Maybe they can make some new stars out of this.

Con: How about you don’t job out some of your guys like Dio Maddin and Isaiah “Swerve” Scott? Maybe it’s not the best idea for The Hurt Business to run through everyone on the first night, too.

For that matter, if it’s a bunch of no-names getting whooped, nobody will care. Joe Schmoe losing to Erik means nothing. But if you start sacrificing your superstars to make others look good, you’re going to kill their credibility, too. It’s a tricky balancing act I’m not sure WWE can manage.

The Girls

Pro: I grew up in an era where the Nitro Girls were a decent bit of eye candy to eat up a few seconds between matches, Sunny and Sable and Marlena were totally reasons to tune in to Raw and so on. Maybe this will attract some people to tune in, or at least better help with the atmosphere that this is supposed to be grungy. It’s certainly not something we’ve seen in WWE for a while, so that does help push that idea.

Con: People are hyper-sensitive these days. I’m sure there are already complaints that the women are being too sexualized and that it’s demeaning.

I’ll admit that I don’t quite understand the idea of ring girls standing next to fighters in UFC or holding up a sign. It feels pretty low-brow to just say “because I’m a guy and guys like looking at hot girls, wooooo!!!” Is it true? Of course it is. But I’m not the type that is more willing to buy a shampoo because there’s a hot chick on the commercial telling me that she’ll bang me if I use it.

Also, if we’re going to do that for the sake of it, you’re failing. These girls weren’t wearing anything suggestive enough to catch my eye. Give me total knockouts wearing very little clothing, if you’re going to do that. Otherwise, just hop on your favorite XXX site. I’ve seen more risque stuff in PG-13 movies and AEW has even done a better job with the girls in bikinis for Fyter Fest and Bash at the Beach.

The Air Time

Pro: WWE isn’t committing to anything outright. They announced that it’s 10pm, which gave off the impression that it would be from 10-11 like that random third hour of Raw that was supposed to get dark and gritty but never went anywhere. If they had outright said this would be a full hour time slot tonight, I think a lot of people would have tuned out.

Con: That being said…what the hell are they doing with this? Randomly cutting to the back to act like this has been going on all night and just showing a few seconds of a jobber getting squashed with no context? That’s awful.

WWE can’t keep this concept going in that way. It can’t just be a series of interstitial bumpers between other segments.

The people who like Raw Underground aren’t going to watch the whole show just to get a few seconds here and there at random. They’ll just check out the highlights on YouTube or something. The people who don’t like this will treat every cut to Raw Underground as a bathroom break. And when you have a promo, a video package, a commercial break, Raw Underground and then a recap of the last week’s episode of Raw before leading into another talking segment or something, you’re going to convince your audience to skip entire 30-minute long chunks of your show.

No Rules

Pro: If this is truly no rules, that can be fun. We could see a different style of fighting that feels more visceral and a change of pace from hours and hours of the same type of content on the rest of Raw, NXT, SmackDown and so on.

Con: Without some rules, everything becomes arbitrary. People need some structure in order to follow an idea. If you have a referee stop things just because you wrote it as “and this is the point where he stops it”, then people aren’t looking for a point where it should stop. UFC works because people analyze when a fight is over with based on a series of somewhat established rules. If WWE can stop a Raw Underground fight because someone was punched once and were knocked out, that’s fine, but don’t have someone get thrown out of the ring and unable to stand and say that’s not a TKO.

There’s a lot of potential to this, but I can also see it being an almost immediate flop and something WWE gets rid of by the time SummerSlam comes along.

It’s going to depend on a lot of factors—most of which we haven’t even seen yet. But I’m interested, that’s for sure. Maybe this will be what saves Raw’s ratings going forward. Perhaps it will be yet another blemish on WWE after a string of bad years.

Whatever it is, Raw Underground is certainly something, that’s for sure. I guess we’ll find out if it ends up being a success or a failure.

What do you think of Raw Underground? Are you excited about this idea or do you think it’s the most ridiculous thing ever? Keep the discussion going in the comments below!

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