WWE Raw To Be 3 Hours Every Week From July 23rd

By Matt Holmes / May 17, 2012

WWE's flagship Monday Night Raw show will be moving to 3-hours long every week permanently from July 23rd. WWE superstar John Cena just broke the news on his Twitter feed; John Cena just tweeted the following message regarding a major change to WWE's flagship Monday night show:

"STARTING Monday Night July 23 @USA_NETWORK WILL BE ADDING A 3RD HOUR TO @WWE MONDAY NIGHT RAW - PERMANENTLY. #3hourRaw"

WWE.com later confirmed the news. The July 23rd Raw is the show's 1,000th episode in history. The move to go to three hours has been coming ever since WWE made the Raw episodes "Supershows" meaning that Raw and SmackDown superstars both appeared each week. This effectively ended the brand extension on TV and has meant an overload of talent and a struggle to find time for the mid card wrestlers such as Dolph Ziggler, Kane and The Miz. The idea to move to three hours would be to give these guys more time on screen and to also allow the company more room to develop story lines. Though it will obviously probably just mean more of the same, just running an hour longer. During its talent overload periods, WCW held three hour Nitro's, effectively asking the writers and talent to produce a three hour pay-per-view every Monday night. The quality of Nitro's went down and we fear WWE struggle to feature enough entertaining moments in two hours that three hours could just be torture. It is believed Raw will start one hour earlier to accommodate the longer running time.