5/25/09 Raw Moves to Los Angeles

(Raw plans to hold its own All-star event)

Just recently, there was a rather noticeable scheduling conflict between the WWE and the NBA's Denver Nuggets. The Nuggets are currently playing in a Best of 7 series with the Los Angeles Lakers for the NBA's Western Conference Finals. The winner of that series will be in the NBA Finals. The Nuggets were scheduled to host Game 4 in Denver at the Pepsi Center. The problem? WWE had scheduled its Monday Night Raw for Denver on the exact same night. WWE had scheduled its event weeks ahead of Denver even making the playoffs or knowing they'd be hosting a game 4 Monday night. However, since it's the discretion of the Nuggets owner, the Nuggets will take over the arena Monday, knocking WWE out.

This left WWE Raw with a major dilemma; over 10,000 people had purchased tickets expecting to attend a live episode of WWE Raw in Denver on Monday. WWE had no choice but to find a new place. As Vince and others have said "the show must go on". So WWE Raw will now be moving to a new arena for Monday, the Staples Center, which is appropriately the home arena of the Nuggets' opponents, the Los Angeles Lakers. There could be a possible breach of contract case here, since WWE had signed a deal to bring their show to Denver months ago. Vince McMahon gave some rather heated comments to ESPN calling the Nugets owner a bad businessman and suggesting a steel cage match was in order. Also according to WWE.com, Vince McMahon will most likely have an in-ring or on the air run-in with a character depicting the owner of the Denver Nuggets. A few other ideas might be to have Hornswoggle infiltrate the court during the Nuggets-Lakers game running around with some sort of Lakers banner or pulling down one of the Nuggets' shorts after smacking him in the shin with a shilaleigh. No matter what transpires, WWE is once again gaining press from the controversy, but they will now have to fill seats for shows in two consecutive nights in Los Angeles (Monday's Raw, Tuesday's ECW/Smackdown). WWE is scheduled for a show again in Denver in August, with no word yet if any Nuggets will be attending or participating in the function.

The WWE issued the following statement on WWE.com regarding the Raw news:

“WWE is extremely grateful to the Lakers and the STAPLES Center for the hospitality and professionalism shown to WWE during this whole situation,” said Vince McMahon, Chairman of World Wrestling Entertainment. “We apologize to all of the WWE fans in the Denver area who have been inconvenienced by Kroenke Sports Enterprises. We look forward to bringing two consecutive nights of WWE excitement to STAPLES Center this Monday and Tuesday night.”

Read more about this story at the LA Times website.