"It just kills you every Monday" - Road Dogg on unfortunate WWE RAW issue (Exclusive)
Brian James and Vince Russo have given an insight into whether NFL television ratings affected the way they wrote WWE storylines.
RAW often loses viewers when the football season begins in September, with many fans watching NFL games on ESPN’s Monday Night Football instead.
Speaking on Sportskeeda’s “The Wrestling Outlaws” show, James recalled how WWE gave up attempting to base segments around the timing of football games.
“It’s definitely not only competition, it just kills you every Monday,” James said. “We started in the last couple of years while I was up there, and this is probably five years ago, started trying to figure out kick-off and what segments in [the same time as NFL games] and trying to figure out how to game it, and there’s no way you can do it.” [3:26-3:47]
In the video above, James and Russo also gave their honest opinions on Brock Lesnar’s tractor segments at SummerSlam.
Vince Russo provides his take on the NFL’s impact on WWE
How much does Monday Night Football usually bite out of WWE Raw viewership?
About 10% compared to the month or so prior to the start of the NFL season. https://t.co/VZCJ4jJCaW
While Brian James was the lead writer of SmackDown as recently as 2019, Vince Russo was one of WWE’s creative figureheads during the Attitude Era two decades ago.
Like James, he concluded that Monday Night Football was destined to take viewers away from RAW no matter what WWE did.
“It really wasn’t,” Russo said when asked if NFL was a factor in his writing. “The driving force was we were all gonna write the best show we possibly could. That’s it. You’ve got no control over Monday Night Football. You’ve got no control over anything else that’s on television. Our goal was to write the absolute best show we could be every Monday night, and that’s how we went about it.” [2:54-3:14]
According to ESPN, Monday Night Football averaged 14.18 million viewers last year.
RAW, by contrast, drew 2.230 million viewers last week. It was the most-watched episode since March 16, 2020, which was the first without any fans in attendance due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Do you sometimes skip RAW to watch another show? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section.
Please credit Sportskeeda’s “The Wrestling Outlaws” and embed the video if you use quotes from this article.