Jerry Lawler On How Tough Last Week's WWE RAW Event Was
As noted, tonight's WWE RAW episode was taped last Monday from the Wells Fargo Center in Des Moines, Iowa because the red brand has tonight off due to the Christmas holiday. You can click here for full spoilers on tonight's show, and you can join us at 8pm ET for live coverage of the taped USA Network broadcast.
WWE Hall of Famer Jerry Lawler discussed last week's RAW tapings during the latest episode of "The Jerry Lawler Show" podcast and said a total of 19 matches were taped. He also confirmed that last week's RAW aired on a slight tape delay as they were in the process of taping the first hour of tonight's show while last week's show went live on USA.
Lawler also talked about how long the night was for the announce team.
"That was a long night. We had 20 matches. So the fans that came to the show that night in Des Moines, Iowa on Monday night got to see 20 matches. We had one dark match [WWE Main Event] and then the two RAWs consisted of 19 total matches and you're right, it was a long night," Lawler said (H/T to POST Wrestling). "We started, and I bet a lot of people didn't realize? it would be hard to realize it but ordinarily, we were on central standard time so central time, the show would've started live on the air at 7 o'clock, but instead we started live in the arena at 6 o'clock, and so we started doing the show, and in order to be able to get both of these shows done in one night, we did the shows without commercial breaks, which made it even tougher on the announcers because a lot of the times, you depend on those commercial breaks to get a second wind or maybe clear your throat or whatever and just let your voice take a break during the little two-minute commercial breaks, but we had no commercial breaks.
"We just ran right on through the entire five hours of shows with no breaks. So when the shows came on live, for the fans to watch at 7 o'clock, it really started an hour before that. So we were doing what you'd call, live-to-tape or tape-to-live I guess, maybe all night long throughout that first show. So when we finished with the first show at like 9 o'clock, it was still going on the air for another hour. You know, because that was the part we'd already taped, and then while that was still airing live? it's hard to say live. While that was still airing on the USA Network as if it were live, we had already started another hour of the following week's show, the Christmas show. Everything was so rushed. It was so crazy."
Lawler continued, "As soon as this week's show was over, here comes all the crew and it was just miraculous the way they do this. I mean, I'd say within the span of two minutes, we finished the one show and within two minutes, they had this entire Christmas scene and everything set up for the start [of] the Christmas show. I don't know how many Christmas trees and wrapped packages and all of this sorta stuff that they brought out onto the stage area for the set for the Christmas-themed show but man, it all happened within an instant."
Remember to join us for live RAW coverage at 8pm ET tonight.