10 Things WWE Did Better Before RAW

Perhaps the most drastic change to accompany the RAW period was a steady increase in out-of-ring presentation. With more hours a week to fill, writers now needed to diversify the action, which led to the backstage area becoming part of the main stage.

This writer isn’t about to suggest this was a bad thing, simply that it opens the door to more strange, out-of-place and just plain bad matches. For every backstage/barroom/boiler room/parking lot brawl that entertained, how many bored us catatonic?

It’s hit-or-miss booking, and often seems to grow out of a loss of faith in ring-only programming.

Meanwhile, in the pre-RAW days, we never had the faintest idea what the hallways looked like in any given venue. Promos and video packages might as well have been taped in a nearby YMCA and we’d have been none the wiser.

Everything was in the ring, and it was fine. Nobody was worried about spicing things up with roving hardcore strike-fests, and the few times you did see behind the curtain, it was a big deal (think Mega Powers breaking up.)