The Insane Downfall of RAW Underground

Sportskeeda Wrestling

Check out Sportskeeda's brand new game, BrainBuster! Can you become the undisputed quiz champion? Play now to find out - https://www.sportskeeda.com/wwe/brainbuster-wwe-player-guessing-game  RAW Underground was WWE’s bold experiment, combining underground fight club vibes with raw wrestling action. From its mysterious setup to Shane McMahon's role as host, this controversial segment took Monday Night RAW in a direction no one saw coming. But why did it fail so quickly? Was it ahead of its time or simply a misstep? Let's find out!   You can also visit our site: https://www.sportskeeda.com/wwe  #shanemcmahon #rawunderground #bobbylashley #vincemcmahon #wwe #wweraw #wrestling #sportskeedawrestling

Transcript

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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