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RAW SELLS OUT SAN JOSE, MAIN EVENT MATCHES, UFC GREAT IN ATTENDANCE, RAW TIMING, JAX DANE TRIBUTE AND MORE

WWE announced tonight's Raw in San Jose as an official sellout with over 14,000 fans.

The episode ran a little over 2 1/2 hours tonight.  As we have noted numerous times before, the series will have greater flexibility in terms of run time depending on their plans for that week. 

There seems to be confusion among some, so to clarify - just because WWE no longer has the "hard out" of having to be off the air by 10 PM or 11 PM Eastern the way they would on The USA Network, that does NOT mean they plan to run endless amounts of time every week.  If they internally time out a show to be over at a certain time and they are running over that time, they are going to do whatever they can to get it back into the manageable time frame they WANT the show to end at.  For example, when they went off the air tonight, they still were holding several dark matches live in Sam Jose and wanted the taping to be over early enough on West Coast time to allow whatever talents and staff scheduled to take red-eye flights home the ability to do so.  Netflix allows flexibility, but the company is still going to maintain their usual structure and timing.  They aren't seeking to be there five hours every week just "because they can that."  Whether they are slated to run 2 hours or 4 hours on a specific week, they are still going to work towards maintaining their internal clock where they want the show to end.  They aren't seeking to run an extra hour because things are running late.

We are told that management was very happy with how well received Penta was tonight.  Rey Mysterio was interviewed and praised Penta's debut as well.

Triple H tweeted:

Ivar of The Viking Raiders wore an armband that ran "Jax" in honor of former NWA Champion Jax Dane, who passed away last month.

No Raw Post Show tonight, so it appears that was a one time thing for the Netflix premiere.

UFC great Daniel Cormier was sitting ringside.

Prior to Raw, WWE taped Pete Dunne vs. Joaquin Wilde and Shayna Baszler & Zoey Stark vs. Kayden Carter & Katana Chance for this Thursday's WWE Main Event episode.

Triple H commented on Lyra Valkria becoming the first-ever WWE Women's Intercontinental Champion:

They were selling special Bayley x San Jose t-shirts tonight at the taping.

WWE NXT Champion Oba Femi was at the event to promote tomorrow's NXT episode.

WWE held two dark matches after the show with Bayley pinning Nia Jax and LA Knight defeating Shinsuke Nakamura by DQ we are told.

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