What’s old is apparently new again, as WWE announced Michael Che and Colin Jost of Saturday Night Live as “special guests” on Monday night’s edition of Raw.
Well, this should be interesting! #SNL cast members and “Weekend Update” Anchors Michael Che & @ColinJost will be special guests tomorrow night on #Raw! Photo courtesy of @nbcsnl https://t.co/FJrh5n46wf pic.twitter.com/oOp4P41ALV
— WWE (@WWE) March 3, 2019
Che and Jost make a little bit of sense as “special guests” for the show. Raw and SNL are part of NBCUniversal, so it’s easy cross-promotion. It’s currently unknown if this is a one time only thing or WWE planning to bring back the guest host concept on a weekly basis., but considering WWE insists on Elias repeating the same promo every week for the last 18 months, I wouldn’t put it past them to start having recurring guest hosts.
WWE first had weekly guest hosts 10 years ago. The company was in a bit of a transition, as they just started the PG era and the roster wasn’t as strong as it is now.
Using guest hosts for Raw was a novel concept in theory. It was a way to bring in big names so WWE can brag about all the big stars they associated themselves with and could potentially drive up ratings as well as fill time if the wrestling or storylines aren’t that great.
The concept, which lasted five years, wound up being unpopular among fans. It gave us some great moments, like Bob Barker hosting a version of The Price is Right on the show, but more likely consisted of a guest who knew absolutely nothing about wrestling (Jeremy Piven calling SummerSlam “SummerFest”), didn’t seem like they would have a sense of humor (Al Sharpton), and/or were barely considered celebrities (Perez Hilton).
Unless the guest host was a WWE legend coming back for one night only, or someone who was willing to go so over-the-top with their performance, the gig would be pretty terrible and wouldn’t make anybody look good. Plus, you could easily tell who was into it and who was just there because they had to be there. It still wasn’t a guarantee that the show would be saved if the guest host was into it, but it certainly helped.
Che and Jost are coming to Philadelphia and that might bring some intrigue. Like most other things, the Philly crowd isn’t afraid to let you know what they think of you, and if you heard Jost’s Philly joke on SNL this past weekend, he’s certainly going to be the heel tonight. If he plays that up, plays to the crowd, and embraces being the heel, it might actually be a good show.
