Key Elements Missing From WWE Saturday Nights Main Event Reboot

Growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, WWF Saturday Nights Main Event was a staple of my wrestling fandom.  Traditionally, they would have one episode per quarter ( 1 every 3 months ) and it was typically to hype up the upcoming Pay Per View at the time, as those were 1 a quarter as well at the time.  Such iconic moments included the Mega Powers forming and then exploding, both times on the show.  Perhaps most iconic was Andre The Giant defeating Hulk Hogan in February of 88, ending his near 4 year title reign.

Thus, I was super excited for last night with the WWE bringing it back, and while most of it was great, they missed some key elements from the original series of the 80’s and 90’s.  In fact, the items that they missed were the ones I looked forward most to seeing again.

So, not to be the “Karen of the bunch”, but I’d be amiss if I didn’t mention the show missing the following elements that were a staple of the original.

The introduction was way off.  The original version had the competitors each cutting 30 second promos about their matches that night, while the music blared in the background to get everyone’s hearts racing.

Speaking of which, they used to have backstage interviews with each competitor right before they came out for their match, once again, there was nothing nearly like that, and that was a giant miss. It would have taken little to no effort to bring back the pink curtain behind them, a dorky announcer like Sean Mooney or Todd Pettengill coming back for one night, and getting it done! I’m SHOCKED they didn’t do some form of the pink curtain interviews.

While they did have the old guardrails as they came down to the ring, they didn’t have them around the ring and that was a miss too.  I mean, if you’re going to have the old-fashioned rails for some of the walkways, why not go all the way with it?

Finally, perhaps the biggest miss was not having the Cartoon Logo’s for each wrestler in the Square Box before every match.  That was so cool back in the day when we weren’t used to seeing wrestlers have logo’s.  The WWF creative team would have to make something up and it was a cross between cool and corny all at once.

While I truly enjoyed seeing Jesse the Body Ventura again,  the return of the Winged Eagle Championship Belt and the old theme music coming back, it was these little elements that they left out, they would have truly taken the show to the next level made it feel less like a Monday Night Raw being held on a Saturday Night.