WWE RAW starts two hours early next Monday, and the reason is a week off at the end of it.
Michael Cole announced on Monday’s show that the August 24th RAW from the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa will begin at 6 p.m. ET on Netflix. WWE is taping SmackDown at the same venue immediately afterwards, and that episode airs on Friday, August 28.
Four days later, there is another one. On August 28 at Rocket Arena in Cleveland, WWE tapes both the August 31 RAW and the September 4 SmackDown back to back, starting at 5:30 p.m. locally.
Two double tapings in five days means four hours of television banked in two nights. Fightful Select was told by a source in the company that the point is to give the roster and crew a bit of time off after the summer before the South American tour.
The gap is real. WWE has live events on August 29 and 30, then nothing until RAW on September 7 in Birmingham, other than Sunday Night’s Main Event in Atlanta on September 6. From there, the company heads to Mexico and South America, with SmackDown at Arena Ciudad de México on September 11 and RAW at the same venue on September 14.
Some schedule shuffling came with it. Charlotte was originally due to host the August 31 RAW; that has been moved, and the city now gets a SmackDown in February 2027. The September 4 SmackDown was set for Cincinnati and has been cancelled.
WWE has done this before, combining RAW and SmackDown in Atlantic City to pre-tape the July 3 episode.
