When it was announced that the 1000th episode of Monday Night Raw would be the beginning of Raw going 3 hours every week, a lot of people including myself instantly thought it would be a bad idea, I say this because the production of Raws usual 2 hour episodes were average at best and at a time where ratings have been on a steady decline. With this negativity there was also people out there being optimistic that the extra hour will provide more exposure to the stars who don't get much TV time. None of us would know how WWE proposed to use this extra hour until the shows aired and it became clear.

Then Raw 1000th kicked off with a highly entertaining episode, with a number of starts from the past including the likes of Degeneration X, Lita, The Rock, commentary from Jim Ross and so much more. Yes WWE put on a great show, with a number of entertaining segments and a few decent wrestling bouts, but with all the returning starts a good show was expected, the ratings were the highest ever for a 3 hour episode and the highest for some time, just imagine the delight on Vince McMahon's face when the rating came in.

Now take away all the stars from the past and you are left with the current WWE roster, you have the likes of John Cena, Randy Orton, Sheamus and CM Punk all capable of keeping audiences interested, stars like Chris Jericho and Daniel Bryan who possess great wrestling ability. Yet the WWE again seems to be dropping the ball and the third hour only makes this more transparent. Instead of making new stars of the future we get a number of highlight packages and failed attempts of comedy. The first hour is always going to be the least viewed due to the new start time so it is important to put on a good quality first hour, how do you do this? Wrestling matches! You'd think it would be obvious but someone at WWE HQ thinks differently. Elevating new stars is a must for a company still relying on old names to bring in the viewers, how can the next Rock's and John Cena's be made doing nothing backstage or wrestling on NXT?

I got the feeling after the last Raw that the 3 hour format would be short lived, there was no wrestling action for the last 40 minutes, just adverts and a very disappointing contract signing with Brock Lesnar and Triple H . Rather the creative team needs to come up with much better content or go back to the 2 hour format, after all 2 hours of bad writing is better than 3 right?