WWE: The Live Crowd Can't Sit Through 3 Hours of RAW

Based on this past week's three-hour RAW, we learned the crowd is something to be concerned for.

The crowd in Hartford, Conn., was the best crowd you ask for in terms of testing the waters for a three-hour format for the final time before it becomes the permanent format. By the third hour, the crowd was exhausted.

This wasn't a terrible episode of RAW. WWE worked within the limits they had. Having a long formatted show like that six days before a pay-per-view is tough. All of your stories have gotten to the point that they have to be and there isn't much more that can be done.

The crowd was exhausted by the third hour and that is a worry for the future. Three-hour RAW is tougher to sit through than a pay-per-view. You're sitting through 15 commercial breaks, Superstars taping, dark matches and watching backstage segments on the Titantron.

This past week's show was a decent show for the time length. There was solid, hard hitting matches such Sheamus vs.Tensai. There was entertaining sequences which were relevant in to making you want to buy the pay-per-view with the AJ, CM Punk, Daniel Bryan and Kane promo followed by tag match.

There was a good start with the return of Vince McMahon. There was a cliff hanger to watch the main event which would be "is McMahon going to fire Laurinaitis?" There was some comedy filler with Ricardo Rodriguez. There was surprise with the cameo match by Vader.

Was Vince McMahon and Hornswoggle making fun of Jim Ross ridiculous? Yes. It was the biggest waste of two minutes. Is it bad wrestling when you see Khali on the offense for a couple minutes? Yes.

You're always going to have some filler. There is no way to go every week, for three hours and go full speed. You just can't do it. Don't have the roster, don't have the creativity and it isn't possible to do while still allowing the stories to grow over a certain number of weeks.

I look back at some of the three-hour WCW Nitro's and you would get an hour that contains a rambling promo that had little direction, matches such as Lord Steven Regal vs. Prince Iaukea or Kevin Sullivan vs. Hardbody Harrison.

People forget, at that time in wrestling, things were interesting. Who is going to show up from what company? Who are they going to join? Who is in the limousine? Wrestling isn't that interesting anymore.

People also forget, if there was a less than interesting match on Nitro, you could turn the channel and hope RAW was on. Today, that alternative isn't there for fans on Monday night.

What worries me is the crowd's enthusiasm had clearly dropped come the third hour and I fear that in the future once the format change is permanent, there will be some RAW's that aren't as good as this one.

WWE doesn't have a deep enough roster, don't book enough interesting angles at one time, ratings and buys continue to overall be down, but WWE is going to add an hour to programming. This sounds about par for the course in certain decision making lately.

I want to be excited about three hours permanently, but I can't stop worrying. I'll be at the 1,000th episode of RAW and that is going to be great. It will be solid all three hours. It should be cause they won't spare any expense to go all out for that episode.

What's the show going to be like for the 1,001 episode? That will be the true test.

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