Cody Rhodes Believes Raw Is Still WWE’s Flagship Show
When it comes to Raw or Smackdown as WWE’s flagship show, Cody Rhodes thinks that the red brand still deserves that moniker.
This past January, WWE celebrated 30 years of Monday Night Raw. While there were other weekly wrestling shows that had long runs, Raw took it to another level since it was a weekly WWE show airing on a weeknight. Since it was also live at times, it became appointment programming for wrestling fans in a lot of ways. That was followed by WCW Nitro two years later and the “Monday Night Wars” captivated audiences for most of the next six years.
Six years after Raw launched, WWE started a second weekly wrestling show called Smackdown in 1999. While Raw had stability on USA Network for most of its 30-year run (it was on Spike/New TNN for a few years), Smackdown moved around a lot on channels like UPN, CW, Syfy, USA Network and eventually Fox in October 2019.
When Fox added Smackdown, it was a big deal for WWE because it was a live wrestling show every week on one of the big four television networks (NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox) in the US. Since Smackdown has been on Fox, it has regularly beaten Raw in terms of the TV audience and it’s the show that WWE’s biggest star, Roman Reigns, calls home since Smackdown on Fox started.
Cody Rhodes, the 2023 WWE Royal Rumble winner, is a Raw guy that will challenge the Undisputed WWE Universal Champion at Wrestlemania 39 whether that’s Reigns or Sami Zayn, who challenges Reigns this Saturday at Elimination Chamber.
During an interview with Peter Rosenberg on Hot 97, Cody Rhodes explained why he feels Raw is still WWE’s flagship show.
“Having grown up in the company, I appreciate SmackDown for all it is and being on Fox and all that wonderfulness there, but RAW is still the flagship show. It almost seems like maybe a younger generation of fans, some of the kids for example that we have at the Nightmare Factory, I ask, ‘Hey, what are you watching’, and this and that. I feel maybe they forgot that it’s the flagship show.”
As he continued, Cody Rhodes talked about some of the top talent on Raw while saying he’s very proud to be on Raw.
“I mean, you’ve got Bianca on there. You got Seth on there. You got Becky on there. I’m back on there. Plus, there’s so much crossover. We’re in the Mania season where the walls are down anyway. You don’t know what’s going to happen, Paul Heyman last week. But for it to be the flagship show, Cena being one of my biggest role models in the business, that’s kind of the individual you want to pattern your steps after and he’s one that I’ve tried to do that and be very proud of being on RAW, being back on RAW.”