00:00It was summer of 2020, right in the thick of WWE's pandemic era, something that had
00:05never been witnessed in wrestling before.
00:08Wrestling as a sport and form of entertainment has evolved over time, but one thing has remained
00:12constant to this day.
00:13It's the fact that the crowd interaction is what makes it so special.
00:18But this was out of WWE's hands at the time.
00:20They somehow convinced the government of Florida that professional wrestling or sports entertainment
00:25was an essential service.
00:26As a result, they got to operate out of a select few venues while following the COVID-19
00:31safety protocols.
00:33Right from the start, it turned into an opportunity for WWE to try something different.
00:38In the first and only Wrestlemania to not have any fans in attendance, there were two
00:42cinematic matches.
00:44The first was the Boneyard match, which turned out to be The Undertaker's swan song, and
00:48the second was the Firefly Funhouse match between John Cena and Bray Wyatt.
00:53The Boneyard match in particular got a lot of praise for being an innovative way to work
00:57around not having a live audience.
01:00It prompted WWE to experiment with different concepts and the most popular one apart from
01:04those two was the Corporate Money in the Bank ladder match.
01:08That featured the men and women battling it out in the WWE headquarters with both briefcases
01:12placed on the roof of the building.
01:14A few months later, WWE decided to experiment with a new concept for Raw.
01:19To say the concept failed to take off would be a bit generous.
01:23We're talking about the bizarre debacle that was Raw Underground.
01:27What was Raw Underground?
01:29It was something that couldn't even last 50 days, but in all seriousness, it appeared
01:34to be inspired at least partially by Josh Barnett's Bloodsport or the Michigan-based
01:38promotion Sanctuary Fight Club, depending on who you ask.
01:42It was reported that minus the lack of ring ropes, almost everything about Raw Underground
01:46mirrored the Sanctuary Fight Club.
01:49The SFC's catchphrase was even, Join the Underground, so make of that what you will.
01:54It was WWE's version of an underground fight club, which makes sense because nobody spoke
01:59about it when it was done.
02:01Shane McMahon returned to WWE TV after almost a year away, a follow-up run where he turned
02:06into a tyrannical commissioner of Smackdown Live before Kevin Owens kicked him out.
02:11Shane was suddenly a good guy again and he was the host of a series that he called Raw
02:15Underground.
02:17It took place in a raunchy warehouse setting with a big ring and no ropes.
02:21There was also junk lying around and dancing girls to give it some sort of sleazy feel.
02:26Fun fact, Omos revealed on the Say Less with Kaz, Lowkey and Rosie podcast that those girls
02:32were actually exotic dancers.
02:35The idea behind it was something that's called a worked shoot style in wrestling.
02:39It's meant to look like it's real and wrestlers can definitely get a bit rough rather
02:43than protecting each other like they usually should, but the fact is that it's ultimately
02:47predetermined like regular wrestling matches.
02:50It was advertised as a no holds barred, anything can happen type of concept, except it wasn't
02:55like that at all.
02:56Shane would just stop the match after an opponent appeared to be knocked out or submitted.
03:02It was meant to be a launching pad for a few big guys like Omos.
03:06There were a lot of familiar names like Bobby Lashley, Dolph Ziggler, Shelton Benjamin,
03:10Eric from the Viking Raiders, as well as Braun Strowman.
03:14Eventually we got to see names like Aleister Black, Kevin Owens, Apollo Crews, Cedric Alexander,
03:19Shayna Baszler, Nia Jax and quite a few others, but WWE seemed intent on using it to pivot
03:26the 6 foot 9 Dabba Kado who was previously known as Babatunde.
03:30When he got started, he slaughtered a few smaller guys who didn't even get the dignity
03:34of an introduction.
03:36Shane even advertised Dabba Kado as being 7 foot tall when he wasn't.
03:40The only good thing about the Raw Underground is that it proved to be a launching pad for
03:44the Hurt Business.
03:46But it was more of a case that Hurt Business was going to succeed in the next few months
03:49anyways.
03:51The way it went down was kind of funny in hindsight.
03:53It coincided with the Retribution storyline as Bobby Lashley, MVP and Shelton Benjamin
03:59concluded that Raw Underground must be the source of Havoc being wrecked on Raw.
04:04So on the very same night that Raw Underground began, the Hurt Business took over the warehouse
04:08and insinuated that they were in charge now.
04:11When they were beating the crap out of all these people, one of the men happened to be
04:15Dio Maddin, who was also eventually revealed to be in Retribution.
04:19Not exactly consistent storytelling.
04:22Shane McMahon, who was supposed to be the victim of a coupe, just happily told them
04:26that they were welcome back whenever they wanted.
04:28What?
04:29They took over Raw Underground when it had only been on the air for a few minutes so
04:33that wasn't very impactful at the time.
04:36In the second week, Omos, who was previously Akira Tozawa's big ninja, was revealed to
04:41be the bodyguard.
04:42Riddick Moss was featured and then Brazilian superstar named Arturo Ruas was shown.
04:48In a pre-recorded and what we have to emphasize, the pre-recorded part here, Ruas knocked his
04:54opponent out with a spin kick that missed by a mile.
04:57Shayna Baszler got a bit of a platform too by squashing multiple women in a row, including
05:02Ivy Nile, and was featured on multiple episodes.
05:06The criticism was instant and nobody seemed to buy the concept.
05:09With every passing week, it was clear as day that there was no actual plan in place.
05:14We could go on about the weird matches between superstars, the typical rewriting of Raw removing
05:19advertised matches, the absurd production quality, or even times when things just abruptly
05:25ended and cut to different segments, but you get the point.
05:29Wrestling veteran Jim Cornette on his podcast had a few very valid pieces of criticism against
05:33Raw Underground.
05:34He pointed out how for years WWE emphasized the entertainment aspect of their programming,
05:40making it clear that it's a scripted entertainment only to attempt a supposedly reality-based
05:44fight club and fail badly at it.
05:47Cornette also mentioned how laughable it was that Shane McMahon would stop fights when
05:51someone was out, while superstars have literally fallen off the titantron onto a table on Raw
05:56and continued wrestling.
05:58What it seemed to be was a ratings grab to try and capitalize on the increasing popularity
06:02of MMA.
06:04Almost everything about the way this was handled was a debacle.
06:07Shane McMahon might be entertaining, but he was never suited to be a TV show host.
06:12The dancing girls were just completely unnecessary.
06:15WWE seemed to have forgotten that they were in the midst of pushing a women's revolution
06:19and that having exotic dancers on their television kinda contradicted that.
06:23In reality, all of this was just a response to declining ratings.
06:27This sums up how incredibly haywire the creative direction of WWE was at the time.
06:32Not everything was bad, but WWE was hurting in the ratings department.
06:37Considering how WWE's broadcast deals were financial lifelines during the pandemic that
06:41continued to make them more profitable than ever, it was a desperate attempt to catch
06:45the audience's attention.
06:47When looking at the timeline, it was also the time when people were at home, so they
06:51had all the time in the world to consume all sorts of different media.
06:54On one hand, it should have given WWE an advantage to swoop in more viewers than the
06:59previous few years, but in reality, they were competing with all kinds of different media.
07:04What Raw Underground represented was an extremely out of touch response.
07:08It's not difficult to see why WWE was so quick to pull the plug on this experiment.
07:13According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, WWE's official reason for canceling Raw
07:18Underground was the fear that having too many extras would spread the coronavirus.
07:23It didn't help that it failed to capture viewership after a very brief boost to the
07:27third hour ratings.
07:28The reason why WWE stopped doing cinematic matches as fun as a few of them were, well,
07:34people don't tune into Raw, Smackdown, NXT, Dynamite, or any other wrestling show to watch
07:39a movie.
07:40They tune in to watch good old fashioned wrestling and entertainment.
07:44When storylines get epic enough the way that the Bloodline saga has unfolded, fans organically
07:49dub them as cinema.
07:51But that's something that's earned.
07:53If WWE continued the cinematic matches, they likely would have hit a brick wall pretty
07:57quickly.
07:58But even as a product of its time, Raw Underground didn't really work.
08:03By all accounts, the entire concept seemed to be the brainchild of Shane McMahon.
08:08Speaking to Corey Graves on the After The Bell podcast, Shane said that it was an original
08:12concept inspired by the times of the Roman Gladiators, Japanese combat sports, and MMA.
08:19The idea was to blend them all with WWE entertainment.
08:23There is some evidence that the overall concept wasn't so bad and that it was more about
08:28the botched execution and the lack of time given to develop.
08:31Incidentally, the Raw Underground format found more success in NXT.
08:37The fact that it was a complete flop on Raw and not NXT was down to a few different factors.
08:42For one, NXT doesn't have anywhere close to the viewership that Raw does on a global
08:47scale.
08:48And secondly, NXT took a bit of a different approach to it.
08:51Being that they're in the position to experiment with different things without the wider audience
08:55criticizing them, it allowed for a few interesting adjustments.
08:59The inaugural NXT Underground match happened on June 26th, 2023 and it's only been done
09:04once every few months.
09:06The live fan engagement made all the difference, but putting people with legitimate backgrounds
09:10in MMA and wrestling made for interesting viewing.
09:13Take the Lola Vice vs Natalya match for example.
09:17In late April 2024, the former Bellator fighter took on the longtime veteran in Natalya and
09:22the match got raving reviews.
09:24There were two legitimately good competitors and that seemed to be the key to having a
09:28realistic looking bout on WWE television.
09:31It also helped that the setting wasn't underground to the point where there was junk thrown around
09:36and NXT Underground turned it into what Raw Underground was supposed to be.
09:40But this can't be a regular occurrence.
09:42Even if it appears on the main roster again, there needs to be a massive change to the
09:47original concept and upgrades to the NXT concept as well.
09:51But at least in the sphere of NXT, there seems to be some appetite for more underground matches
09:56in the future.
09:57Maybe we could see it evolve into an even bigger concept.
10:01With Raw going to Netflix and WWE set to fire on all cylinders, who knows if we could get
10:06a version of Underground that caters to a more adult audience.
10:10AJ Styles briefly spoke about how he felt WWE could have improved Raw Underground.
10:15His idea was to take inspiration from a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie where there were fight scenes
10:19in various settings like parking garages, tennis courts, swimming pools, etc.
10:25AJ Styles said that using different locations like bars, streets, and other settings would
10:29make it more entertaining and we have to agree with that.
10:33The future is going to be interesting.
10:35Would you like to see a new take on the Underground concept?
10:39Let us know what you think in the comments below!
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