Summer 2022 has been a historic season for professional wrestling. Vince McMahon officially retired from his corporate WWE positions, Paul “Triple H” Levesque was promoted to head of creative, and just last night Jon Moxley unified the AEW World Title in a shocking squash match against CM Punk. Before any of those stories unfolded, a report surfaced in mid-July that hinted at WWE taking its product in a more adult-oriented direction. On July 14th, Andrew Zarian of the Mat Men podcast reported that WWE would be shifting Monday Night Raw back to a TV-14 rating. While this was never confirmed outright, Friday Night SmackDown commentator Pat McAfee alluded to the rumored change in a recent promo.
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“This ain’t TV-14 yet, but d—-ebag Corbin is an accurate title,” McAfee said on the July 15th edition of SmackDown.
While a TV-14 shift might have been the plan for the past regime, PWInsider reports that WWE has no current plans to abandon its TV-PG rating for any of its shows. The report states that a ratings change was in the works at one point in time, but those plans have been abandoned.
WWE has been TV-PG since July 2008. Stronger language and blood have not been completely absent from the product in that time, but it is far from encouraged. In fact, former WWE superstar Batista was once fined $100,000 for blading during a PG-era steel cage match against Chris Jericho, as McMahon wanted to set an example of how serious they were taking this new rating.
Back in July 2019, then-WWE CEO Vince McMahon mentioned aspirations to make the shows “a bit edgier” but didn’t want to revert back to the “blood and guts” of the Attitude Era.
“We’re gonna be a bit edgier, but still remain in the PG environment. We won’t come anywhere close to going into another level. That will be something we do in terms of the direction of content, more controversy, and better storylines,” McMahon said. “At the same time, we’re not going to go back to the Attitude Era. We’re not gonna do blood and guts, such as being done on perhaps a new potential competitor. We’re not going to go back to that gory crap that we graduated from. It’s a more sophisticated product.”
All that being said, WWE SummerSlam this year was listed as TV-14 for a number of hours before it was altered back to a TV-PG rating.
Stay tuned to ComicBook.com for updates on WWE’s television rating.
