October 3, 2005 Observer Newsletter: Final Raw on Spike, Pride Bushido
The war involving WWE, USA Network, Spike TV, UFC and even TNA led to some crazy television antics on 9/26, and an off-the-charts Raw show on 10/3, which becomes the most important night for TV wrestling since March 26, 2001–the end of the last version of the Monday Night War.
The line-ups are set with USA moving the Raw start back to 8 p.m. (the move to 7:55 p.m. was to get a jump on UFC, but when Spike then added another hour of UFC programming starting at 7 p.m., it no longer served a purpose), followed by the Best of Raw special at 11:05 p.m. and “The Mummy Returns” at midnight going against TNA.
Spike has UFC Unleashed at 7 p.m., airing old PPV matches including Andrei Arlovsky vs. Vladimir Matyushenko and Forest Griffin vs. Bill Mahood, since Arlovsky and Griffin are the headliners on the 10/7 UFC PPV show. At 8 p.m. it has an Ultimate Knockouts special. The Ultimate Fight Night live show from Las Vegas is from 9-11 p.m., Ultimate Fighter starts at 11 p.m., followed by TNA at midnight, and the Ultimate Fight Night live show replay at 1 a.m. Forgotten amongst all this, is much of the audience they are battling over will be watching Monday Night Football, which has taken a chunk out of both WWE and UFC ratings the past few weeks.
Subscribers can click here to read the rest of this issue.
Dave Meltzer is the founder and lead writer on the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the weekly constant when it comes to news and reviews in pro wrestling and mixed martial arts for more than 40 years. Dave also co-hosts Wrestling Observer Radio with Bryan Alvarez and had had bylines for The National, Yahoo Sports, MMA Fighting and others.