Reason Behind WWE Hall of Fame Forum on “Monday Night Raw” Revealed

This Monday night (Aug. 25) on “Raw,” WWE Hall of Famers Shawn Michaels, Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan will open the show with a special forum where they’ll be discussing a number of topics with the WWE Universe.

The trio will talk about Brock Lesnar’s dominating performance over John Cena for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at “SummerSlam,” as well as who they believe will emerge victorious in the rematch at “Night of Champions.”

The reason behind this forum is to help draw a large audience to the show right off the bat.

Why is that so important? For the first time ever, the Emmy awards, which recognize excellence in the television industry, will be handed out on a Monday night.

For a more in-depth look at why the Emmy’s are falling on a Monday, check out this excerpt from Vulture.com:

To be more precise, this year’s super-freaky Emmys scheduling is the result of a perfect storm of factors, with football being the most significant (and intuitive) one. Fact is, in addition to a couple of arbitrary August telecasts in the 1980s and ’90s, pre–Labor Day occurrences of the Emmys have been a quadrennial occurrence since 2006, when the NFL’s long-running Sunday Night Footballshifted from ESPN to NBC. The Emmys rotate among the Big Four broadcast networks from year to year, and 2006 just so happened to be NBC’s turn hosting the show. But because it had just agreed to pay a reported $600 million per year for the rights to air football, there was no way the Peacock network was going to preempt one of its September games for an awards show. So it came down to a decision to either move the Emmys off of Sunday and keep it post–Labor Day, or move up the telecast to August; NBC obviously chose the latter strategy. It happened again in 2010, when the Emmys took place on Sunday, August 29.

Editor’s Note

All of the HBK, Flair and Hogan appearances on the planet won’t save WWE from getting smoked in the ratings on Monday night. If anything, it’s a testament to the starpower and allure of the Emmy awards and the drawing power that event has each and every year. 

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