Shane Douglas Looks Back At The Time That Went Into Raw Tapings In 1995
Shane Douglas spoke on his memories of the work that went into Raw tapings, as well as Raw 25 recently on his Triple Threat Podcast. You can hear the full podcast at this link, and check out highlights submitted by Chad and John of the Two Man Power Trip below:
WWE’s upcoming RAW 25th Anniversary:
"Raw has been a major staple of professional wrestling (whether Vince wants to call it that or not) and a major part of that history over the last 25 years and as you talked about earlier with the cultural impact of wrestling and how far reaching they are I think it is a hell of an accomplishment that they've been able to get to twenty five years. Albeit the last couple of years may be a little sketchy but it is pretty rare that you'd find anybody or any red-blooded American that wouldn't know what you are talking about if you said to them the phrase "Monday Night RAW". So in that respect and all of the names mentioned are the certain kind of names that wrestling fans are going to want to tune in to it. "
The hours of work that went into a monthly RAW TV taping:
"It was actually more like hours and hours and hours and hours. The crowd got dead after about two hours and there were multiple times and it was a big running joke among the boys that was that you'd go out to the ring and have a match where you might have missed a spot or there was something that Vince wanted that you didn't put in and they'd stop you behind the curtain and have a towel there for you to towel off and turn around hit the music and send you right back out to do the exact same match you just had finished but including what Vince wanted in the match. So imagine you are sitting as a fan and you see Shane Douglas and Scott Hall go to the ring and have a match and they come back and ten seconds later the music hits and out comes Shane Douglas and Scott Hall to have the exact same match that you just watched with one or two differences that you probably don't remember because you are so bored of watching the same match you just watched. It was just a crowd killer. I remember the first and second hours usually had a decent crowd response but by the end of that second hour you could hear it draining off and by the third or fourth hour the crowd was just flat. Vince would pipe in the music on the TV show so you'd hear a roar of the crowd but you'd see the crowd sitting there motionless with bored looks on their faces and it was pretty evident that it was piped in sound. To me it was a death-knell and one that I didn't see the reason for nothing other than overkill to just keep putting on more and more and more matches and sometimes like the old saying goes less is more. To go out there and lose the crowd after two hours on their feet and wanting more is far better than having a crowd going and looking at their watches saying that they are glad to be getting out of there already which was my recollection of a RAW taping back then. They were brutally long and I believe unnecessarily so."
For this and every other episode of The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling and The Triple Threat Podcast featuring "The Franchise" Shane Douglas please subscribe to them on iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Podomatic, and Player FM. Also follow us on Twitter @TwoManPowerTrip
