It’s late at night. 12.30am. My alarm has just went off and I’m both happy and sad to hear it going… I nearly drift off back to sleep, but I get up. It’s early Tuesday morning, and that means it’s time to watch Monday Night RAW.

Many Americans won’t experience this problem – having to wake up at a normal time for a TV show will be normal for them, as RAW normally shows live at 8pm over in the US. Although for overseas fans this is quite different, as I myself have to wake up at times like 12.30am so we can watch the PPV at 1am. This sometimes isn’t a problem for fans as they will stay up the full night, but I like to get a nap beforehand as it’s very hard to get through a show from 1am to 4am. This goes the same for PPVs, and also certain special events like NXT Takeover (which I had to wake up for at 3am).

This is a choice I’m willing to take, and many others, as most of us fans are now on social media and we have mobile phones and we risk getting the results ruined for us. Whenever I don’t watch RAW or a PPV live, I wake up in the morning and see messages from my friends like ‘did you watch RAW?!? _____ debuted and I’m marking out!’ There are always measures I take to avoid this but somehow, someway I always get the results ruined for me and it’s horrible. For example, when the Royal Rumble was on last year I had to go to school and my parents wouldn’t let me stay up to watch it. I got the results for the Royal Rumble spoiled for me as soon as I walked in as some other people had seen it and I’d heard them talking about it! It was such an annoyance and I always stay cautious from now on – literally blocking out anything if I have to go anywhere if there is a wrestling event the night before.

Staying up is a hard thing to do too. As a dedicated wrestling fan, many fans in the UK stay up to watch WWE as it is on so late. RAW normally shows on the Sky Sports channels (the main sports channels in the UK) and we have to pay for this subscription. Luckily, our family have this so I can watch every week. For PPVs however, we have to watch on the WWE Network or pay for the PPV on its own if we don’t have the WWE Network. This is costly for a WWE fan like me and many people get the enjoyment of watching RAW free in the US.

For TNA, we don’t even have a live TV broadcast, and when it is broadcast on TV it is 5 days later than the original broadcast in the UK on Challenge Network – which is decent as it is free but the delay makes it easy to see spoilers about the show, which is possibly why TNA isn’t as popular as WWE is in the UK. No other promotions are broadcast on UK TV as of now, and no promotions like PROGRESS, ICW or RPW are televised when they are fully capable of being acquired on national TV – the broadcasters just don’t see the promise in this sadly, although they normally do air shows that have no role of being on the air.

We do have a good talk show every Sunday though, after TNA on Sunday nights which is WrestleTalkTV. It has had guests such as Bret Hart, Jim Cornette and many other names from the world of wrestling doing interviews and making appearances on the sofa with presenters Francesca Wood and notable British wrestler Marty Scurll. This lineup does change though, and there are sometimes guest presenters on the show.

Watching wrestling in the UK on TV is very limited, and it’s sad to say that no British promotions have aired on national TV for a very long time. Hopefully one day this will change, and with the likes of PROGRESS making a name for themselves, there could be a deal cut for them to be finally shown on TV for more fans to enjoy! Many fans do enjoy travelling to events in the UK, but this can prove costly for fans in the younger generation like myself, which is why it would be a great idea to show British wrestling on TV again.

I hope you enjoyed this article, and you can have your say on the official Twitter account for the blog @wrestlingfansGB, or tweet me personally at @badblue13!

Thank you for reading the blog, and I hope you can keep visiting and become a regular!

Phil