WWE: Why Monday Night Raw Needs Something Fresh

It is interesting to observe how WWE Raw—after all the fuss over its 1,000th episode and new three-hour format—has settled into a comfortable, almost predictable routine.

There will be a Tout plug and some Twitter mentions. Then a fiery John Cena in which he vows to get back his WWE Championship. Then more Tout and Twitter plugs. CM Punk will once again complain about how underappreciated and undervalued he is.

Furthermore, the Brock Lesnar/Triple H rivalry will be continued. New Raw GM A.J. Lee will continue to assert her power and lose her mind at anyone who calls her “crazy.” Then the announcers will plug WWE’s official YouTube channel. In between all this, we may even get a few decent wrestling matches.

On the bright side, Raw hasn’t collapsed under the weight of the extra hour like Nitro—WCW’s flagship show—before it. The ratings are steady and the quality of the show is usually fine (granted, it does drag at points but this was probably inevitable). Nitro’s booking team made the mistake of trying to cram too much in a desperate attempt to garner viewers. Raw has largely been free of train wreck storylines or erratic booking.

But this does not mean everything is fine.

In fact, over the past few months the program has become predictable and formulaic—and is in dire need of being freshened up lest it becomes a stale shell of its former self. The show has gotten so bad these days, you can often predict what is going to happen before it happens.

It doesn’t help that CM Punk has been WWE Champion for most of the past year and—as hard as he tries—his reign has grown stale. If he ever does lose the title? Well, that will probably be to John Cena, who isn’t exactly a fresh face on top.

So can anything be done? Or is WWE merely content filling up three hours of TV a week on the USA Network and not too bothered if every aspect of the show isn’t as entertaining as it could be?

Well, an intriguing change of direction was hinted at two weeks ago—the night after SummerSlam. After he soundly defeated Triple H the previous night, Brock Lesnar, accompanied by his villainous manager Paul Heyman, strutted to the ring to announce to everyone that there was now a change of guard in the company. Triple H was out, Lesnar and Heyman were in. Per Heyman, he and his client were now running the show, not the McMahon family.

It was a fascinating idea: Lesnar, the established UFC name, now taking over the world’s biggest wrestling company. Done correctly it could have been a cool MMA invasion storyline.

Of course, this promising angle was soon forgotten about after Lesnar announced in a Tout (yes, a Tout) that he was once again quitting the company, feeling he had nothing else to prove. Of course he’ll be back—the Triple H feud is far from over by the looks of it—but the chance for a great storyline that would have turned Raw on its head slipped through the fingers of the booking team.

Maybe WWE will pick up the Lesnar storyline at some point or try something else drastically different—like giving some young up-and-coming star a major push. Who knows?

But here’s hoping they at least give it a go because Raw—once the greatest, most exciting wrestling show on television—is fast turning into lame, formulaic viewing.