WWE Raw

WWE RAW is the Monday night professional wrestling show for World Wrestling Entertainment. It currently airs live on Spike TV every Monday night at 9:00pm to 11:00pm EST, since it is a live broadcasting, the show might have an overrun. It also airs live in Canada on TSN. Starting in January of 2005, RAW will also broadcast live in the United Kingdom on SKY TV at 2:00am UTC.

Name History

WWE Raw has been known by many names, including:

"WWF Monday Night RAW" (1993)
"WWF RAW Is War" (1997) (Hour one)
"WWF Warzone" (1997) (Hour two)
"WWF RAW" (2001)
"WWE RAW" (2002) (Current)

The name "WWF Warzone" was used for the second hour of "WWF Raw Is War" as a way to split the show into two seperate shows and charge a higher advertisement rate in the second hour. This process was eventually dropped. The title was simplified again in 2001 when WWE dropped the words "Is War" in response to the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attacks and the resulting war on terror. The name was again changed in 2002 when WWE lost its court case with the World Wildlife Fund. The initials "WWF" were no longer allowed to be used and were changed to WWE.

Show history

RAW has previously been aired on the USA Network. The only networks to have aired RAW are the USA Network and TNN, which is now Spike TV.

There is also a sister show titled WWE Sunday Night HEAT which airs on Spike TV at 7:00 post-meridian Eastern Standard Time on Sundays.

The current Raw is the successor to "WWF Monday Night RAW", which first aired in 1993 on USA Network. The original Raw broke new ground in televised professional wrestling. Traditionally, wrestling shows were taped on sound stages with small audiences, or at large arena shows. RAW originated from a small New York City theater, the Manhattan Center, and aired live each week. The combination of an intimate venue and live action proved highly successful. However, the weekly live schedule proved to be a financial drain on WWE, and taped shows began airing every other week. Eventually, RAW aired live shows only about once per month, with the other shows being taped.

WCW, with the deep pockets of Ted Turner backing the promotion, then began Monday Nitro, which aired live each week. On several occasions, World Championship Wrestling head Eric Bischoff, who was also an on-air personality, gave away the results of WWF's taped RAW shows on the live WCW show (a tactic that backfired when they announced Mick Foley's first WWF title victory, causing millions of viewers to switch to RAW to see it). Under this pressure, the WWE started presenting RAW live every week, and has continued with live shows ever since, even after the demise of WCW. Although RAW 's sister show, SmackDown!, has had a couple of live shows, it has never continually been aired live. WWE normally tapes a Tuesday night SmackDown! show for airing on Thursday night of the same week.

Brand extension

In early to mid 2002, the WWE underwent something they called the Brand Extension. In a nutshell, this meant that the two WWE Television shows (RAW and Smackdown) would become competition for each other. This came about when the WWE (then known as WWF) purchased their two biggest competitors, WCW and ECW.

The Brand Extension would bring about a change like nothing the WWF/WWE has seen before. Wrestlers would become show exclusive, wrestling for their specific show only. This at the time excluded the WWE Undisputed Champion and Women's Champion, as originally, those WWF/WWE titles would be defended on both shows. However, in later 2002, Brock Lesnar, at that time theWWE Undisputed Champion, refused to defend the title on Raw, causing the title to become exclusive to Smackdown. (It has since been referred to as the WWE Championship, dropping the word 'undisputed'.) The following week on Raw, General Manager Eric Bischoff awarded the World Heavyweight Title, in the form of the old WCW World Heavyweight Championship belt, to RAW's designated #1 contender, Triple H.

The WWE Women's Championship is now generally accepted to be RAW exclusive, even though nothing happened to officially make it an exclusive title.

The current RAW titles are listed below.

Current RAW championships

Title Notes:	Current Champion(s)
World Heavyweight Champion ¹	vacant
World Tag-Team Champions ²	Eugene (Nick Dinsmore) and William Regal (Darrin Matthews)
WWE Women's Champion ³	Lita
WWE Intercontinental Champion ⁴	Shelton Benjamin

¹: This was originally the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. Reintroduced by Eric Bischoff when the originally WWE Championship became Smackdown! exclusive.
²: This is the original WWE Tag-Team Championship.
³: This is the original WWE Women's Championship.
⁴: The original WWE Intercontinental Championship; was at one time discontinued, but was reintroduced by Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Recent happenings

¹: Chris Benoit & Edge (Adam Copeland) defeated Triple H (Paul Levesque), in a Triple Threat Match on RAW November 29, 2004 when Edge submitted to Benoit but also had Benoit in a pinfall situation, therefore the championship is vacant due to orders by Vince McMahon, as announced on RAW (December 6, 2004).

²: Eugene (Nick Dinsmore) and William Regal (Darrin Matthews) defeated La Résistance (Sylvain Grenier and Robert Conway) on RAW (November 15, 2004).

³: Lita (Amy Dumas) defeated Trish Stratus (Patricia Stratigias) on RAW (December 6, 2004).

⁴: Shelton Benjamin defeated Chris Jericho (Chris Irvine) at Taboo Tuesday 2004.