Royal Rumble Raw

So I’ve been running thru the 96-97 Bret-Austin angle and while it appears there’s no THURSDAY RAW THURSDAY on the Network, I have come across the 2/3/97 Raw that Vince is hyping as ROYAL RUMBLE RAW! They show a bunch of Rumble clips throughout the show, but the most interesting part of it is that all of the in-ring action appears to be from a Skydome house show, complete with trash lighting, bad sound, generic entrance aisle, and blatantly canned commentary. What’s the deal here? Why this production instead of a regular show?

​Oh yeah, THAT show. Basically USA was pushing hard for RAW to go to two hours to compete with Nitro and boost their ratings up, so Vince was like "OK, let’s show the entire Royal Rumble match on free TV!" USA thought this was great. Now, since this was a time before they killed their own PPV market, the cable companies, on the other hand, freaked the fuck out and made legal threats, so they were left with a two hour time slot and no content to fill it at the last minute. So they just used the footage from the Skydome house show a few days earlier, redubbed commentary, and spliced in Rumble footage. Ta da!

Today they ​show the entire Rumble match on free TV and no one bats an eyelash.