Examining How WWE Can Adjust Raw to Make More Time for Divas Division

WWE Raw shortchanges the Divas on a weekly basis. 

Somewhere on that marquee show, between all the comedy bits, recaps and in-ring action, there has to be more time to showcase the females on the roster. Correcting that doesn't require the company to reconfigure Raw. It only needs to slightly modify the current formula.

That's a change that needs to happen. Divas' talents are wasted by having so many members of that division on the bench for so long.

Monday's Raw featured just two minutes and 44 seconds worth of ring time for the women, per ProFightDB.com. On a three-hour show, the entire Divas division had less than three minutes to work with.

That's unacceptable.

Paige, Natalya and Company can't produce anything worth watching with that sliver of air time. As Edge told Alternative Nation's Brett Buchanan, "It's not possible to have a good wrestling match in two minutes, you can't tell a story, you can tell a haiku." 

This has been the standard share of the booking pie the Divas have received. Rarely did you see a match move past the four-minute mark.

How does WWE allow its women to tell stories, not haikus? It's a matter of minor reshaping. 

Cut Down the Opening Promo

The standard Raw opens with a big name like John Cena or Triple H addressing the fans in the ring. The speech that follows serves to further the headlining story.

Inevitably, another wrestler enters the ring to interrupt. Then another follows. Soon a whole host of men bicker between the ropes. 

This usually leads to The Authority announcing the main event, a bout involving some combination of the quarreling warriors in the opening segment.

That can take upward of 15 to 20 minutes. 

Setting up a major match for the night is important, as is focusing on the angle that involves these men, but there's no reason it needs to take so long every time out. It usually drags anyway. Fans look up, a huge chunk of the Raw is done with and very little has happened.

WWE can pluck two to three minutes from this segment.

Not only would that make the opening tauter, but with that change alone, the company can double the average Divas match.

Scale Back the Recaps

Too often, WWE will show fans what it watched just a few minutes prior.

Big Show attacks Roman Reigns. Raw cuts to commercial. And moments later, footage of Big Show's attack airs again. 

Sum up what happened a few weeks ago or on the last show even, but there's no need to have so much of Raw echo on the same night. It only leads to fan interest fading.

There is too much dependence on video recapping of past events as well. On Monday's Raw, in the middle of John Cena's speech, WWE showed Sting's Raw debut.  

The company should let the announcers play the role of reminding and grounding the audience, of working in the larger narratives.

Shows like Walking Dead and Breaking Bad do all their recapping early and then let the show play out uninterrupted. Going in that direction opens the door for more wrestlers to get more ring time, especially the Divas. 

Shave off even just a minute a night of recaps, and the women will have more space to work with.

Save the Repeats for Another Time

Raw is often home to matches that don't accomplish much. They don't advance a feud as much as keep it in fans' minds.

Take The Usos' feud with Damien Mizdow and The Miz, for example. For several weeks straight, WWE would just trot out one of The Usos, throw him into the ring with The Miz and add nothing story-wise.

Consult The Miz's profile on CageMatch.net for a look at how often WWE turned to this strategy. Jey Uso battled The Miz on Dec. 22, Jan. 12 and Jan. 19 editions of Raw. Jimmy had his turns on Raw against The Awesome One on Dec. 15 and Nov. 3. 

WWE could have swapped any one of those for a Divas match. It's not as if that series was red-hot anyway. 

The "put one half of two teams against each other" booking strategy is overused. The company could have escalated the stakes and intensity of that feud via interviews or an ambush.

Making that switch opens up another slot on the Raw card, one the Divas could sorely use.

WWE need not cut out the goofy comic-relief segments or gut the show's other bouts. Raw doesn't need a makeover to make room for the Divas; it only needs a trim.