Those Supershows from the mid-2000s.

[agent817]

Does anybody remember how back in the mid-2000s that there were these "supershows" that were Raw and Smackdown back to back? Raw was live but Smackdown was taped after the show for Friday (or Thursday, before the switch to Fridays in 2005)? The thing I wonder is if they had taped Heat and Velocity at those same shows. If so, that's a pretty long time to be there. Yes, I could understand shows going on for four hours. I know that in the dying days of WCW that Thunder was taped on the same night as Nitro, which meant it would be a 4-hour long show for the attendees. I remember in 2011 going to a Smackdown taping but they also had Superstars (late-2000s to mid-2010s version of Superstars) and NXT (early-2010s version when it was like a game show). But six hours, at least from that era, that's a bit much.

For those who had gone to these shows, were Heat and Velocity taped?

I will note that it was funny to see Smackdown with the Raw set during that time. There were times when the entryway was replaced with the dome-like screen where the curtains were for the entrances. Other times it would just have the screen that was used for Raw during that time.

[Oh Cry Me a Screwball]

I went to a Raw double taping in 2011, where they did a live Raw, and then a taped Raw immediately after that, so WWE could tour Australia that week (and also do a throwaway show that aired on July 4th). For Superstars, they taped two matches for that week's show, and another match for the next week's edition of Superstars.

On this particular show, when they started filming the taped Raw, they pretty much cut out any downtime they could to minimize how long everyone was at the show. As soon as everyone from a match or segment was back behind the curtain, they were playing the music for the next match or segment. Backstage pre-tapes were not shown to the crowd, even if it explained why a particular match was happening (Jack Swagger vs. Sgt. Slaughter took place to the surprise of everyone in attendance, but fans watching the show the next week saw a backstage segment that set up the match). If a match was interrupted by a commercial break, it's possible that the commercial breaks were longer than the content they cut out of the match.

I'd say the "two hour Raw" took about maybe an hour and fifteen minutes in a live setting, so I assume the Raw/Smackdown supershows were produced in much the same manner. On a sidenote, it was probably really dumb to do a double taping at this particular time in 2011, given that the live Raw ended with pretty much one of the most important promos of the decade, but instead of having until next week to see the fallout of the CM Punk pipebomb, everyone at the arena found out within 90 minutes of the promo that it was certainly a work and that Punk was still going to be in the main event of Money in the Bank.

[mattyy]

I'm pretty sure Velocity and Heat those weeks just recapped the shows. Looking at the results online, it looks like the one in particular I remember (a spring 2005 show), there was a dark match, and then it went straight into RAW, and then main evented by SmackDown.

[Jake, The Jake, Jake]

I went to one in September? 2005 and from what I recall there were no heat or velocity matches, no.

[67 more]

I can tell you for certain Heat and Velocity were just recap shows on those weeks.

[sarkerpolseng]

I went to one and it was the Eddie tribute shows. So mine was weird.