News on WWE’s Broadcast Plans for RAW 25

With a little bit less than two weeks until WWE‘s big 25th anniversary of RAW show, plans are starting to come to the light for what the company has in store for one of the biggest episodes of television they have ever produced.

We’ve known now for several months that the show would be emanating from two locations. There will be one live show happening from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, which has hosted the last several editions of WWE SummerSlam. Across town, WWE will also be producing a live show at the Manhattan Center in Manhattan. The Manhattan Center was the exclusive site of many of the early editions of Monday Night RAW.

According to Justin LaBar of Wrestling Inc., the current plans call for about about two hours of the show to be broadcast from the Barclays Center and about one hour to come from the Manhattan Center. It’s assumed that WWE directors will be cutting back and forth between the venues, rather than an hour (or more) straight from one venue, with WWE set to produce five hours of live action that night altogether. We have to assume that WWE will still be putting on a show at one venue while television is airing live from the other.

LaBar also states that The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels are both slated to appear at the Manhattan Center event, which makes sense given they both appeared on many of the early editions of RAW from that venue in 1993. However, the report also notes that some talent are being booked to appear at both the Manhattan Center and the Barclays Center, so Undertaker and Michaels could be transported across town to Brooklyn at some point.

WWE will likely have camera crews on hand at both venues to capture footage for a future edition of WWE 24. Virtually every edition of that documentary series (which airs exclusively on the WWE Network) has been must-see so far, so we can expect the RAW 25 documentary to be outstanding.

There’s been a movement among some of the younger talent to appear at the Manhattan Center show, given that many of them grew up watching the early editions of RAW that were broadcast from there. They are seeing this as a once in a lifetime chance to wrestle for WWE at the venue, as the company isn’t likely to have another show there anytime soon. However, the majority of the roster is being reserved for the Barclays Center even since more programming is set to be produced from that venue.