This one's tricky, because of television contracts, rights fees, international markets, and all of that complex mumbo-jumbo that bores most fans to read about. As much as most of us would prefer Raw to go back to two hours (or hell, even one hour like during the Manhattan Center glory days!), the advertising dollars alone firmly put commerce ahead of 'art'. With Lucha Underground, every second counts. There's no room to waste time during a one-hour show, so pretty much everything you see builds to something, or pays something off. Raw can afford to waste time with lame product placement bits and 400 recaps of the opening segment, because there's 180-plus minutes to fill. If they could somehow get Raw back to two hours, it would be a tremendous boost to the product overall. Just don't hold your breath on it happening soon. In the meantime, have you heard of this one hour show called Lucha Underground? I hear it's pretty good...
Justin has been a wrestling fan since 1989, and has been writing about it since 2009. Since 2014, Justin has been a features writer and interviewer for Fighting Spirit Magazine. Justin also writes for History of Wrestling, and is a contributing author to James Dixon's Titan series.
