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.

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