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Monday Night Raw is on a losing streak.
It feels like every year from the time SummerSlam ends until the build to Royal Rumble begins, WWE just gets stuck in a rut. Maybe its the changing of the seasons, the fact Survivor Series is well behind the other big four pay-per-views or the company just anticipates less eyeballs on their product due to the NFL.
The fall season is not kind to fans of pro wrestling but 2018 just feels especially bad. The month of November in particular featured more hits than misses on Monday night.
You know what has gotten barely mentioned by WWE over the past three weeks and counting? The Universal title. What is supposed to be positioned as the biggest prize, in the biggest pro wrestling company in the world, has been left on the back burner.
When nobody from Raw brand is making mention of or even making a half-hearted attempt to chase the most important title in the promotion, the larger story kind of all just crumbles apart.
I’m not saying the Universal title is the magic wand that cures all of Raw’s many, many.many problems but it could make for a decent starting point.
We’ve been through this before. We screamed into the dark abyss before about why having a part-time wrestler like Brock Lesnar hold your flagship title for long periods of time can dilute your brand. It’s easy to Monday (Tuesday) morning quarterback, WWE’s decision to put the Universal title back on Lesnar after Roman Reigns relinquished the championship due to health reasons, but yeah it’s hard to argue that WWE didn’t fumble that move.
If Seth Rollins, Drew McIntyre, Finn Balor, Dean Ambrose or someone else from the red brand’s locker room was carrying the Universal title on their shoulders for the past month, would Raw have been any better off?
Maybe, maybe not, but the end of day WWE needs something to shake them out of pattern of sub-par Monday night programming.
If given the book, what would you do to fix Monday night Raw? Is there even a cure-all at this point?