By Wade Keller, PWTorch editor

So what are some ideas for WWE to make the best of this potentially disastrous decision to expand Raw to three hours? These are not radical ideas. Most of them have worked historically in WWE or other wrestling promotions. Many of them have faded from the minds of long-term power-brokers in wrestling and some are foreign, unknown concepts to many people in WWE (wrestlers, creative team members, executives) to whom the Monday Night War was perhaps their first exposure to wrestling (or John Cena was the first big star they ever paid to see), and who haven't bothered to read any of the one or two dozen indispensable wrestling history books.

LIMIT APPEARANCES OF TOP HALF DOZEN STARS

This seems counter-intuitive, but it's perhaps the most vital move WWE could make, but the least likely move. WWE has to fill a lot of TV time now. Filling this extra hour with longer matches between PPV main event level wrestlers overexposes PPV level matches and top talent. WWE has to make appearances from the top half dozen stars feel special by pulling back now on how often they appear and putting a ton of effort into hyping anytime they do appear.

When Cena wrestles on TV, it should be talked about for a week or two ahead of time and hyped throughout the show, including other wrestlers talking on promos about their issue, but adding onto the end a quick thought on Cena's big TV match later. Dusty Rhodes employed this technique well to hype his rare TV appearances when he was booker. It felt self-agrandizing then, but it was effective at psychologically making it seem that he was a very big deal and everyone should gather to see him grace our presence.

REINVIGORATE TAG DIVISION

If WWE does the right thing and employs the first suggestion above, they cannot fill three hours of Raw and two hours of Smackdown each week with mid-card singles wrestlers that viewers have been trained to believe don't count for anything in matches they've been conditioned to believe are just filler. So a way around that is to give these “unworthy singles wrestlers” (this is WWE's portrayal of them) something to fight over – tag team titles.

Robert Gibson of the Rock & Roll Express, Dennis Condrey of the Midnight Express, Jim Neidhart of the Hart Foundation, Jacques Rougeau of the Rougeau Brothers, even Road Warrior Animal of the LOD wouldn't necessarily have been standout draws as singles wrestlers. Same goes for both member of Demolition, The Dream Team, The Dudleys, the early years of Edge & Christian, the early years of The Hardy Boys, and on and on. But putting them in tag teams and filling the tag division with four strong tag teams and another half dozen stepping stone teams (to do jobs to the top teams) and up-and-coming teams (whose matches against top tier teams have meaning because a win over them would elevate the newer younger team) made them valuable draws.

WWE filled a lot of valuable TV time with British Bulldogs vs. The Hart Foundation and Dream Team. It was as much a reason I watched the WWF in the mid-to-late-'80s as any other reason – in part because then top star Hulk Hogan wasn't on TV every week because Vince McMahon knew the perils of overexposing his top act just to boost TV ratings.

MAKE THE IC AND US TITLES MAIN TITLES DEFENDED ON TV

The U.S. and Intercontinental titles have great histories. Fans who have seen 1980s and 1990s WWF wrestling live as it happened or via DVD or YouTube or WWE Classics on Demand lament the diminished value these secondary titles have. I understand with two World Titles that the secondary titles would diminish in value, but it doesn't have to be that way. And with three hours of Raw and two hours of Smackdown – and a new commitment to limiting the exposure of the top half dozen stars – requires that the US and IC titles now get elevated again.

WWE should embark on making those titles TV Main Event Worthy. If they put the vaunted WWE Machine behind that effort, it could work. Fans would embrace it. Every potential future PPV main eventer should fight for this title because history shows long reigns with these titles are stepping stones to establishing themselves as world title contenders. For instance, Dolph Ziggler could be IC Champ on Raw, and he could be doing what Bret Hart and Curt Hennig and many others did in previous generations – defending that title in showcase matches that build the foundation for him to be seen as a deserving top star years later.

If the US and IC Titles were defended every-other week on Raw and Smackdown in one of three key spots – the very start, the top of the second hour, or the end of the show – it would by the very nature of the positioning on the show and the hype surrounding it – elevate the belts to prestige and they'd become ratings draws. Pick the right wrestlers, build up their challengers and feuds, and give them time to have a great match and fans will not miss the thrown-together, sadly quickly forgotten parade of John Cena and C.M. Punk and other top stars in TV main events week after week.

CRUISERWEIGHTS

Give them a new name that doesn't carry the stigma (maybe Mid-Heavweight Title), but create a division of wrestlers who clearly aren't big enough to believably compete against the biggest heavyweights. Give them one or two matches a week on Raw to showcase their personalities and athleticism (not just their athleticism – shorter wrestlers are just as likely to have personalities as taller wrestlers, a fact that seems to be lost on pro wrestling's power-brokers over the years) and give them a title to fight over. Suddenly the depth of talent available to WWE expands tremendously (although DGUSA and ROH might be looking to fill some vacated top spots on the roster). Remember, cruiserweights displaying their tremendous athleticism was one of the key reasons Nitro was bearable to watch start to finish. There are only so many snarky Outsider interviews and earnest DDP interviews you can tolerate before fans want to see wrestlers who can do more than talk a tough fight. Fans want to see athletes do amazing things, and nobody does more amazing things athletically than smaller wrestlers. WWE should put the Machine behind the division and Raw will likely reattract a lot of lost 12-17 year old males who have abandoned the show at an alarming rate the last two years.

CONCLUSION

There are other things I'd do to change (improve) WWE, but these suggestions are most specifically able to solve the issue of holding viewers attention for three hours on Monday nights while not destroying PPV buys by overexposing top talent. The temptation is going to be to put Cena on every other segment throughout all three hours of Raw to try to keep people tuned in, but that overexposure will destroy Cena's drawing power. It's the exact opposite of the right thing to do, but it takes tremendous discipline to work hard at creating new categories and divisions that matter to fans to fill this extra time.

I'm interested to see what, if anything, Vince McMahon and Kevin Dunn have up their sleeve to try to make three-hour Raws tolerable and not drag on forever like the three-hour Nitros did. As I wrote yesterday, if they just stay the course and continue doing what they've been doing, but try to fill a third hour each week by overexposing top stars and just making mid-card matches between wrestlers they have no recent history of making fans care about longer is not going to work. Nor are more segments with non-wrestler authority figures and celebrity skits. WWE needs to make fans care about wrestling, offer a wider variety of titles they are fighting over, and limit the exposure of top stars in the mean time. It goes against the grain of everything McMahon, Dunn, and Triple H seem to stand for, so that's why I'm predicting Raw's average rating drops well below 3.0, that in the next six months they often draw 2.5 or lower ratings, and they hit a low point of 2.3.

I think a lot of people will watch an hour of Raw, not not two or three. They will read about or watch clips of the highlights they missed. And so while the total number of unique viewers may not drop drastically, the percentage of them watching at any given time over the course of three hours will drop, and therefore so will ratings.

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