I've been watching old episodes of Raw lately.

[agent817]

I mean episodes of Raw from before 1997 and 1998. Anyway, while I can see that the show was shorter in that era before becoming a 2-hour show, but what I can't get over is why the main eventers have their matches at the start of the show and the main event is just some throwaway match featuring mid-carders and jobbers. Sure, some of the time, we have a wrestler or two involved who is over with fans, but it wasn't a lot.

Of course, I guess the same could be said for episodes of Raw in 1997 or 1998 when they had a main event match featuring mid-carders. I still remember two editions of Raw Saturday Night having matches like that back in 1998. One was Scorpio vs. Jeff Jarrett, but it had Undertaker and Kane interfering. The other had DX vs. Kaientai, though that Saturday night edition of Raw felt more like a special than anything.

When did Raw start having main event matches and segments involving some of the more "important" angles?

[Deleted]

I remember up to like 1998 they were still having main events like Mero vs. Goldust.

[BlackoutCreature]

The typical thinking at the time for these prime time shows was that they had the most viewers earlier in the show and as the show continues people start to nod off or lose interest in some other way, so you wanted to put your best stuff out at the beginning to get the most people to see it. It was the same reason why the old Saturday Night's Main Event's had their top matches in the first half hour.

They started moving away when the Monday Night Wars started heating up and they used the shows themselves to build up fan interest in the matches.

[Deleted]

Yes Raw was pretty much a 2 hour ad for the next WWF PPV. If you wanted to see, say Diesel vs Bret Hart, you had to by the PPV.

When WCW got serious and started putting Nitro on, WCW put real matches on and was showcasing their stars. WWF had to start putting proper matches on TV to compete.

[Jiren]

I miss the days when Big PPV matches weren't given away on TV.

[agent817]

Well, I can see what you guys are saying. I personally don't mind the format of the old style of Raw and I have been enjoying what I have seen, but it makes a lot of sense in using the show to hype up the upcoming PPVs.

[Cranjis McBasketball]

Jan 5, 2014 20:46:29 GMT -5 BlackoutCreature said:

The typical thinking at the time for these prime time shows was that they had the most viewers earlier in the show and as the show continues people start to nod off or lose interest in some other way, so you wanted to put your best stuff out at the beginning to get the most people to see it. It was the same reason why the old Saturday Night's Main Event's had their top matches in the first half hour.

They started moving away when the Monday Night Wars started heating up and they used the shows themselves to build up fan interest in the matches.

They also put the main event on early in house shows to build the return match for the next time they came through town. So if Hogan and Ordondoff went on 3rd, Heenan could cause a DQ or something, then at intermission Fink would come out and announce the return match was signed for x amount of weeks out and tickets were on sale. Meanwhile, some of the top guys were also doing a few shots a day, so it gave them time to get on the plane and off to the next show to go on early.