Why is Netflix censoring WWE Raw? Money & ads might be ruining yet another aspect of wrestling

WWE/Netflix

Money and ads might be ruining yet another aspect of wrestling as Netflix has been censoring WWE Raw and PLEs quite heavily as of late.

One of the biggest conversations in wrestling in 2026 has been how ads are ruining the WWE product – but that criticism has usually been focused on the sheer amount of ads and their placement in the show.

However, there might be another couple of knock-on effects that are now causing more problems.

Fans are getting frustrated with WWE & Netflix

For the past few months, but the past few weeks especially, fans have started noticing elements of WWE shows being censored quite heavily by Netflix.

This has included things like wrestlers’ bloody faces being blurred out, or camera cuts like last week when Jaida Parker ran over Jacob Fatu with a car.

Bron Breakker’s face is blurred out in the WWE Night of Champions replay on Netflix to censor the blood during the match https://t.co/zhdhoztdO0

— WrestleTalk (@WrestleTalk_TV) July 1, 2026

These things are usually shown uncensored live, with the exception of a few occasions where they’re highlights/replays shown as being from ‘earlier in the day’ instead of being presented as ‘live.’

This has been especially magnified over the past few weeks with the top storyline on WWE Raw focused on the warfare between the 946 and the Bloodline, which has included bloody attacks, a kidnapping, arson, and a hit and run.

Considering this is supposed to be the top storyline on the show, it’s disappointing that viewers watching live are getting such a watered-down experience due to the heavy censorship – but why might that be?

Is the on-demand viewing experience being tanked on purpose?

Well, one possible reason is that it’s a ploy to encourage live viewing. If WWE and Netflix can kind of purposely tank the on-demand viewing experience, they might think it’ll convince more viewers to watch live instead.

And why would they do that? The key thing here is that ads are unskippable when watching it live – because believe it or not, you can’t skip forward something that’s live – so you’re forced to sit through all the ads. When you’re watching on-demand, you can just skip over the ads… and there are a lot to skip over.

Chad Gable’s celebration turns into an ad for Mug Root Beer

https://t.co/7yaHN7y9Mr

— WrestleTalk (@WrestleTalk_TV) August 3, 2026

So that’s one reason ads and money might be the reason, but there’s another as well.

Sponsors might have an issue…

Netflix might be concerned that companies aren’t going to want to run ads during WWE Raw if the product isn’t appropriate for as many viewers as possible, and has as low of an age rating as possible.

If a company says to Netflix, “We’d have paid x amount of money to run ads during Raw, but we’re not because we don’t want our product associated with the blood or language or whatever it is,” Netflix is probably going to want to solve that by making the product more appropriate for the advertisers.

There is another possibility too, which is that Netflix is providing a global version of Raw, and as such, it has to adhere to the strictest regional guidelines – as opposed to serving different versions to different regions.

Some fans had unfairly and over-optimistically convinced themselves and each other that the move to Netflix was going to lead to the return of the ‘Attitude Era,’ which was never truly going to be the case in today’s day and age – WWE is just past the point of ever doing that.

It is, however, a little disappointing that we’ve gone so far in the opposite direction, and things are actually more censored now than they were pre-Netflix.

That is kind of just the way of the world now though, so perhaps that has something to do with it as well.

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• wwe
• RAW
• Netflix

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