When the brandsplit first happened, it was nothing but good news for SmackDown Live! Before the draft, SmackDown was hardly a show. Since it was filmed on Tuesday, and didn’t air until Thursday or Friday, it was impossible to keep parts of the show a secret. If something important happened or there was a great match, everyone knew about it days before it was on television. After the split however, the show benefited greatly. It became its own brand, and more importantly, a brand based on wrestling, and wrestling alone.
Make SmackDown Live Great Again
Laying the SmackDown
Before we get started, let’s talk about what makes SmackDown so much better than Monday Night Raw.
Despite only having two hours as opposed to Raw’s three, SmackDown was great at getting new talent over. Wrestlers that were greatly underutilized on Raw were able to shine on SmackDown. Heath Slater has been entertaining for years, but on Raw, he was just a jobber. With his “free agent” gimmick, he became a fan favorite and eventually a Tag Team Champion with Rhyno. That’s fantastic!
Dolph Ziggler has been a fan favorite for years, but on Raw, he was nothing more than a midcarder. On SmackDown however, he’s been one of the biggest stars. He was the first person to challenge Dean Ambrose for his WWE World Championship, and had an outstanding feud with The Miz over the Intercontinental Champonship, which he eventually won. Everyone from Ric Flair to Kevin Nash had been putting Ziggler over for months, and on SmackDown, he finally got to shine.
SmackDown was the brand that gave underutilized stars a chance to shine, and the show genuinely felt like a different program from Raw. And that’s a good thing. While Raw has been up and down lately, it’s a bit stale. Three hours of the same old stuff can get exhausting, and fans were ecstatic to see a new product.
The Raw Truth
Perception Is Reality
Bryan Alvarez and R.D. Reynolds wrote a book about the Monday Night Wars called the “Death of WCW“, and in it, there’s a fantastic quote. Alvarez says “When a promotion is hot, you can make all kinds of mistakes and it’ll take a long time to sink the ship, but when it’s cold, you can do all the right things and it doesn’t make a difference“. At the beginning of the brand split, SmackDown was red hot and Raw was ice cold.
SmackDown was given the opportunity to create a new show from scratch. They were gifted the best of both worlds. It was basically a brand new promotion, but they had stars that the fans already loved, and the most prestigious title in pro wrestling. It had a new look, with new stories, but the same stars that fans had grown to love.
Meanwhile on Raw, nothing really changed. It was the same show that has been on since 1993. Sure, the first episode saw Finn Bálor debut and become the number one contender for the Universal Championship on the same night, they simply couldn’t keep it up. The next week, it was back to the same Monday Night Raw that fans had been watching, albeit with half the roster.
SmackDown has been perceived by many as a better show because it’s been different. For members of the WWE Universe, Raw had been stale for so long that they were desperate for something new.
Survivor Series
However, in recent weeks, SmackDown has strayed from the path. When the show started, Daniel Bryan promised that it would be about the superstars, and not the authority figures. While Stephanie McMahon has be on TV more than she should be, she didn’t put herself on the Raw Women’s Team at Survivor Series. Despite having a roster that includes the likes of Apollo Crews, Zack Ryder, Tyler Breeze, The Miz, Kane, and Luke Harper, the 46 year old Shane McMahon is part of the SmackDown Men’s Team at the yearly event. Originally, Baron Corbin was set to be on the team, but they kayfabe injured him so McMahon could fill the spot.
That’s ridiculous. The Raw team is stacked with wrestlers like Kevin Owens, Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, Chris Jericho, and Braun Strowman. Everyone on that team except for Strowman has been a world champion in WWE. While Randy Orton, Dean Ambrose, and AJ Styles can say the same, and Bray Wyatt is no slouch, McMahon doesn’t belong. With the exception of the cage spot, his match against The Undertaker at WrestleMania this year was garbage.
And that’s just the men’s team. Why in the world is Nikki Bella the captain of the SmackDown’s Women’s team when Becky Lynch is their champion? Is it because she’s more experienced? Because that’s simply not true. If anyone, Natalya should be the captain, but she’s technically not even on the team. On Raw, Charlotte is the champion and the team captain, so why isn’t Lynch the SmackDown champion?
James Ellsworth
This is a controversial subject. James Ellsworth is a jobber that stole the hearts of the WWE Universe when he showed up on Monday Night Raw to face Braun Strowman. He made a couple of appearances, and the fans ate it up. This was fine. It was like when Blue Pants would make the odd appearance on NXT. Then it got out of hand.
On the October 11th edition of SmackDown Live, Ellsworth was chosen by WWE World Champion, AJ Styles for a non-title match. Upon hearing about this, Daniel Bryan made Dean Ambrose the special guest referee. This was fine as well, because it became a unique vehicle for the Ambrose/Style title feud.
But then it just kept happening. The following week, he had a championship match with Styles, which he won by DQ. After that, he interfered with two Ambrose/Styles matches, costing each wrestler a match a piece, and granting Ambrose the number one contendership. Then! The next week, he was in a six-man main event tag. Hell, he’s going to be with the men’s team at Survivor Series.
Keep in mnd, Ellsworth isn’t a member of the SmackDown Live roster. He’s not signed to a contract with the WWE. However, he’s consistently getting more screen time than most of the roster, including talented workers like Crews, Breeze, or Kalisto, and reportedly, it’s upsetting some people in the back. For example, Hall of Famer Booker T wishes Ellsworth would just go back to the indies.
One thing is for sure. It’s a little hypocritical to mock Monday Night Raw for bringing Goldberg back, away from the title picture, for a WrestleMania rematch, when James Ellsworth is deciding the main event every week.
Make SmackDown Live Great Again
It’s not too late. For the most part, it seems like the WWE Universe still enjoys the current iteration of SmackDown Live. Maybe this is just my personal preference, and everyone else is loving it. That’s not a ridiculous thought, the best thing about pro wrestling is that you don’t have to love everything because they’re something for everyone.
But, then again, there are numbers that agree with my theory. SmackDown’s ratings are slowly but surely declining, and they couldn’t even beat Raw when the Monday night show went up against the Presidential Debate and Monday Night Football. Maybe it’s because in some kind of Pavlovian way, fans are conditioned to tune in on Monday, or maybe it’s because their new style only appeals to a certain demographic, but SmackDown just isn’t making people watch like Raw is.
If WWE wants to make SmackDown Live great again, they should get back to basics. They should get back to what made them the better brand in the eyes of the fans. Give underutilized talent (like Tyler Breeze) a chance they wouldn’t have gotten on Raw, and make the show about Wrestling, not Randy Orton recycling the “Daniel Wyatt” angle from three years ago. (Bonus: It’s also the same angle Orton used with the Authority in early 2015).
