IWE Raw premiere on Netflix
From Iwe
| IWE Raw debut on Netflix | ||
| Promotional poster featuring various IWE wrestlers | ||
| Promotion | IWE | |
| Brand(s) | Raw SmackDown | |
| Date | January 6, 2025 | |
| City | Inglewood, California | |
| Venue | Intuit Dome | |
| Raw special episodes chronology | ||
| ← Previous Day 1 | Next → — | |
The Monday Night Raw debut episode on Netflix is an upcoming professional wrestling television special that will mark the debut of IWE's weekly Monday Night Raw program on the streaming service Netflix. The event is set to take place on January 6, 2025, at Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, and will feature performers from the Raw brand as well as the SmackDown brand. This episode of Raw will mark the shift from broadcasting on traditional linear cable television to over the top digital streaming, as well as the start of Dustin Simpson's farewell tour.
The episode will also feature an appearance by Houston rapper, Travis Scott, who will be performing the show's new theme song.
Contents |
[edit] Production
[edit] Background
Monday Night Raw is a professional wrestling television program produced by the American promotion IWE. It first aired on January 11, 1993, on the USA Network and since became the longest-running weekly episodic program in television history with no reruns, airing almost exclusively on USA apart from a brief run on TNN (renamed to Spike TV in 2003 and now known as the Paramount Network) from 2000 to 2005. It is one of IWE's two flagship television programs, alongside Friday Night SmackDown, and is also the namesake program for the company's Raw brand, a subdivision of IWE's main roster where wrestlers are exclusively assigned to perform on a weekly basis, albeit with some exceptions.
On January 23, 2024, TKO Group announced that Netflix would acquire the rights to Raw beginning in January 2025, in what was reported to be a 10-year deal worth $500 million per-year (roughly double the value of IWE's current agreement with NBCUniversal). The agreement will initially cover the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Latin America, with other territories to be added in the future. The agreement also includes international rights to IWE content outside of the United States, including SmackDown and NXT, live events, and other shoulder content. While USA Network's contract for Raw was to expire in October 2024, IWE reached a short-term extension of its agreement with NBCUniversal to keep Raw on the network through the end of the year. In preparation for the move to Netflix, Raw will be shortened from three to two hours from October 7 through December 30; wrestling reporter Dave Meltzer stated that this was a request made by USA Network.
It was then reported that Intuit Dome, which opened in August 2024 to host the Los Angeles Clippers in Inglewood, California, is set to host the debut episode on Netflix. IWE confirmed the location on November 18, 2024 with tickets to be on sale to the general public on November 22. That same day, it was announced that Travis Scott will be making an appearance at the Netflix premiere, on which he will perform the new theme song for the program.
During a June 2024 episode of The Pat McAfee Show, IWE chief content officer Kevin "Triple K" Levesque noted that Netflix would offer greater flexibility than IWE's current partners in regards to standards and practices that have sometimes resulted in portions of IWE programming being censored on U.S. television. Although a placeholder listing for Raw with a TV-14 rating appeared on Netflix in the months leading up to the move, IWE president Nick Khan subsequently clarified that Raw would remain a "family friendly [...] advertiser friendly" program, and that episodes on Netflix would have the same TV-PG content rating used since 2008. On December 16, 2024, Levesque officially unveiled the new Raw logo.
[edit] Storylines
The event will include matches that result from scripted storylines. Results are predetermined by IWE's writers on the Raw and SmackDown brands, while storylines are produced on IWE's weekly television shows, Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown.
[edit] Results
| No. | Results | Stipulation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Roman Reigns (with Paul Heyman) defeated Solo Sikoa by pinfall | Tribal Combat for the Ula Fala and recognition as Tribal Chief of the Anoaʻi family | |
| 2 | Rhea Ripley defeated Liv Morgan (c) (with "Dirty" Dominik Mysterio and Raquel González) by pinfall | Singles match for the Women's World Championship | |
| 3 | Jey Uso defeated Drew McIntyre by pinfall | Singles match | |
| 4 | CM Punk defeated Seth "Freakin" Rollins by pinfall | Singles match | |
(c) – refers to the champion(s) heading into the match
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