WWE Raw has become one of the most recognizable brands in television, but according to longtime wrestling producer David Sahadi, the name behind the flagship program actually started with a budget problem.
Speaking on the 83 Weeks podcast with Eric Bischoff and Conrad Thompson, Sahadi reflected on the early days of the show in the early 1990s. At the time, WWE was not generating the kind of revenue it would later see during the boom years of the Attitude Era.
According to Sahadi, the original presentation of the show at the Manhattan Center reflected those financial limitations.
“Do you know why we call that show Raw?” Sahadi said. “Right now it’s such a glossy great-looking show on TV with all the LED boards and all the pyrotechnics and everything you can spare. We were not making money back then in 1992 going into 1993. So it was called RAW because we were doing it cheap.”
Sahadi explained that the production was intentionally simple because WWE could not afford the elaborate sets and visual effects that fans associate with the show today.
“There was not a big set. There were no lights. There was no pyro. So it was raw, stripped down.”
Once the name was established, Sahadi said the company worked to give the word a more marketable meaning.
“But we turned that into something like raw emotion, raw something else. That was my job to put a good euphemism on the word raw. But it’s really because we were losing money.”
Looking back at the earliest episodes, Sahadi said the limited production value made the situation obvious.
“If you go back and look at those shows that were shot at the Manhattan Center, there’s no lighting effects, there’s no pyro, there’s nothing,” he said. “There’s a little entrance they come out of that looks kind of crappy. It was raw because it was cheap.”
More than three decades later, Raw has evolved into a global television powerhouse with massive production values, international tours, and major media rights deals. What began as a stripped down show produced on a tight budget eventually became one of WWE’s most valuable brands.
Did you ever notice how simple the early episodes of Raw looked compared to today’s massive production, and do you think the stripped down style actually made the show feel more authentic?
