Shawn Michaels Recalls The Early Days Of WWE Raw
Shawn Michaels provided firsthand experience of what things were like during RAW’s infancy.
RAW launched on January 11th, 1993 and has been airing without interruption ever since. The switch from taped shows used for syndication to weekly (and sometimes bi-weekly) live broadcasts was a major change that had profound impacts on the company and its ability to reach wider audiences.
But that shift also had a profound effect on the wrestling itself, according to Shawn Michaels.
Speaking on an episode of WWE’s The Bump, Shawn Michaels explained how being on live TV complete with commercials added another difficulty to structuring matches.
As someone that was used to just wrestling and thinking of the action in the moment, Shawn Michaels and his peers at the time had to learn how to take going in and out of commercial breaks into account, which wasn’t always easy.
“We’ve come a long way now as far as you know commercial breaks and how you get there, the timing and stuff like that. So honestly that was the most difficult transition is understanding the live television, going to commercials, coming back from commercials.
The way you communicate knowing when you’re in commercials and out of commercials. You have all these things that are already running through your head in a wrestling match, the added element of live television was something that was truly fascinating and ground-breaking at the time for me.
But again, all of it, a wonderful journey to [have] been able to [be] part of.”
h/t Sescoops for the transcription