Lucha Underground booking for Raw

So I was way late to the Lucha Underground party, so I binged to catch up. I realized I was watching 3 episodes at a time, which is the same length as Raw but I would never, ever in a million years watch a full 3-hour Raw. Ditto for when I was catching up on Raw from 1994 – the pace made it possible to watch 3 episodes in a row without wanting to stick a fork in my eye.


My question – why doesn’t WWE book Raw as 3 1-hour shows each week? I don’t mean setting off fireworks at the top of the hour & switching announcers, like Nitro did. I mean, book 1-hour wrestling shows that have a specific story or big angle and put them back to back to back.

For example, John Cena opens the show at 8 and challenges, say, AJ Styles to match. Instead of doing that match at 10:45, do that match at 8:45. Or, have Cena issue the challenge at 10 and do the match at 10:45.

Right now, it feels to me like they’re trying to stretch the formula for 2-hour Raw into 3-hours and it gets overloaded with filler.

​Because they have a FORMULA and they’re gonna stick to it, even if the top star doesn’t fit that mold and fans reject him in that role, and even if ratings drop 10% each year that they stubbornly cling to the 3-hour format.

From their point of view, if they did your idea then people could pick and choose which hours they want to watch, and at that point you might as well just do a one-hour show. The idea is keep people engaged for all three hours, even though it’s a dismal failure in practice. ​