On Monday night, World Wrestling Entertainment wrote the first pages of an exciting new chapter of wrestling history. For the first time ever, the company’s flagship show, Monday Night Raw, aired live on Netflix. The deal between WWE and the streamer is worth something in the region of $5bn across 10 years – a mammoth agreement that, in theory, puts WWE in front of more eyes than ever before.
That’s certainly true here in the UK. Since 2020, you’ve needed to pay for a TNT Sports subscription to watch WWE’s weekly TV shows over here. Before that, WWE spent 30 years locked behind the paywall model of Sky TV. Since the tail end of the 1980s, being a British fan of WWE has been a pricey endeavour.
Now, though, WWE is exclusive to Netflix in the UK. All of the company’s weekly shows will air live on the platform, as well as all of its pay-per-view special events – including WrestleMania and the forthcoming Royal Rumble. According to TV ratings body Barb, around 60% of households in the UK have access to Netflix, while Sky take-up is estimated at somewhere around 28%. Suddenly, the potential audience for WWE has doubled.
In the opening minutes of Monday’s three-hour broadcast, WWE pulled out all the stops to welcome potential new audiences to the world of wrestling. An emotional video package outlined the history of wrestling, as well as heading off any “you know it’s fake, right?” criticism with a straightforward acknowledgement of the art form’s fiction. “Truth is, a great swath of American culture is born of that eternal battle between the face and the heel,” said the narration from WWE boss Triple H, using the “insider” terms for heroes and villains. Just a decade or so ago, it would have been taboo for any wrestling broadcast to offer such an explicit peek behind the curtain.
So with the stage set, the show began. But having spoken so emotionally and with stirring power about the genius of the pro wrestling arts, it took just over 32 minutes for anybody in this wrestling show to actually wrestle. In fact, across the 182-minute broadcast, just 62 minutes of in-ring action took place.
To me, that doesn’t seem like the best way to welcome in new fans. They don’t want to watch semi-retired famous faces from the past – hello The Rock and John Cena – talk about wrestling in between endless drone shots of the arena. They want to be introduced to the current characters, the current storylines, and – most importantly – the actual wrestling.
Take the first hour of the show for a prime example of what didn’t work here. That emotional opening video was followed by a brief, impactful sequence of Triple H in the ring. The Rock then showed up to repeat the same beats – shedding his recent villainous character in the process – before we got our first match between Roman Reigns and his family member Solo Sikoa.
This was a strange choice for an opening contest, given its reliance on a complex and multi-layered story WWE has been telling since Reigns debuted his “Tribal Chief” character way back in 2020. That’s more than four years of storytelling behind the action. The match also featured interference from the following people – take a deep breath. Tama Tonga, Jacob Fatu, Jimmy Uso, Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, and Cody Rhodes, before The Rock showed up again after the final bell. This was overwhelming for me, so I can only imagine how it played out for people watching WWE either for the first time or for the first time since John Cena was still a white rapper.
But the most bizarre thing about all of this, which covered the entire first hour of the broadcast, is that only one of the people who had appeared on the show up until this point will be there next week. WWE’s roster is split into two, with half of the wrestlers signed to Raw and the other half to Friday Night SmackDown. This isn’t a rigid dividing line, but it roughly holds in place outside of special occasions.
Of everybody who appeared in that first hour, only Sami Zayn – who made a one-minute cameo in the match – is signed to Raw. All of the others are SmackDown talent, brought across just to give Raw a boost for its Netflix debut. That includes Cody Rhodes, who was introduced as the WWE Champion. That is indeed the title he holds, but he’s exclusive to SmackDown for the most part. Raw has a world champion of its own in the Austrian powerhouse Gunther, so where was he in all of this?
Gunther is the World Heavyweight Champion, but sat out the Netflix premiere
(Credit: WWE)
Well, if you chose to make a cup of tea just after the two-hour mark, you’ll have missed his brief appearance in a two-minute pre-recorded video package. How can new fans be expected to get on board with a show when the ostensible “main character” doesn’t even appear live? This was a big misstep for WWE, neutering their world champion and, as a result, compromising the show on which he is supposed to reign supreme.
As a wrestling fan, I very much enjoyed Raw. The four matches we saw were all of a very high quality – most notably the main event clash between Seth Rollins and CM Punk – and it’s always a thrill to see the likes of Cena and Rock strut their stuff on the microphone, as well as the newly villainous New Day faction.
However, as an entry point for new viewers, it made some fundamental errors. I still have very high hopes for the Netflix era and I’m genuinely thrilled that wrestling stands a chance of achieving some mainstream popularity again. But hopefully this first instalment won’t be indicative of what’s to come – talky, reliant on past stars, and cavalier in setting fan expectations about which faces they can expect to see.
WWE Raw airs live every Monday night on Netflix UK. For more from the world of wrestling, learn about the one match I think will make fans of you all.
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