10 Forgotten WWE Experiments That Didn't Last
9. Raw’s ‘Grittier’ Third Hour
May 2019 was a trip, man. Brock Lesnar won a Money In The Bank briefcase nobody wanted him to have (especially Mustafa Ali), and the company debuted a weaker version of the old Hardcore Title via the unwanted 24/7 Title. During that same segment on Raw, Mick Foley also confirmed that the flagship's third hour would be "downright mean and nasty".
This lasted a few weeks before WWE management lost interest and abandoned the idea completely. In truth, nothing of note actually happened anyway. "Mean and nasty" proved to be a glorified lighting switch more than anything. Lighting techs darkened part of the arena, thus making it look more like WCW Nitro in 2000 than some super-cool new direction for WWE's main weekly.
Graphical assets had a new black background for hour 3, and we were all told that this was akin to Raw Is War entering the 'War Zone' back in the late-90s. Not quite. Still PG, the product couldn't live up to the billing or offer anything drastically different to what people were seeing during the first 2 hours of the broadcast, which rendered the whole experiment pretty much pointless.
Put it this way: If the third hour isn't any different beyond some darker lighting and claims that everything's about to get nastier than Sags and Knobbs, then what's the bloomin' point in caring about it? Nobody has ever tuned into a wrestling show and said, 'Ooooh, they changed the lighting a little - I'm hooked'. What was the long term aim here?!
"Mean and nasty" sounded lame too.