A Little More On Raw’s Anniversary
As I said earlier, Raw turned 20 today. I can’t let that go by with just a single sentence.This isn’t going to be a full on article or anything but rather just a few thoughts on the show. When Raw debuted, it marked the death nail for Saturday Night’s Main Event as there was no point to the show from then on. One of the things I think people don’t remember about Raw is that for the first two years or so, the show SUCKED. There were rarely big matches, only a handful of title changes, and it was easily the B show to Superstars for a long time. 1993-1995 weren’t good years for the WWF as they were trying to find a new identity with Hogan leaving (I don’t think he appeared on Raw until 2002 unless I’m forgetting something which I likely am), and Raw wasn’t the place where that would happen for a few years.
Obviously I don’t think anyone guessed it would become what it is today, but it’s still amazing to think how much things have changed since the show started in that hole called the Manhattan Center. Today you have Raw in arenas that hold 20,000 people, or about ten times what the Center could hold. It took them awhile to get out of those smaller places though. Raw didn’t get to MSG until September of 1997. Those old shows still have a charm to them though, as it was still something so new and revolutionary (being live even semi-weekly was a big deal back then), even though the shows mostly sucked.
Those of you that haven’t checked the earlier shows out, track a few down. They’re a far cry from what you see today and resemble ROH TV, but they’re still the foundation of what the WWF was back then, which makes them at least interesting to see. Raw has come a long way and has been anywhere from must see TV to “can we find a good test pattern instead of this garbage?”, but it’s always been on, which says a lot. It’s still worth seeing, just not at three hours every week.
Anyway, Happy Birthday Raw. I’ve never missed a single episode and I don’t plan to anytime soon.
I think Hogan made a couple appearances going into WM 9.
Hogan came back after Brother Bruti got his face bashed by Money Inc. setting up the WMIX Tag Title match if memory serves correctly.
Hogan appeared on the 15th of February 1993 edition of RAW.