Welcome back to Pro Wrestling Review. First of all happy new year even though that was a couple weeks ago and at this time of year there are lots of resolution being made but there is one that I want wwe to make. I want them to get smackdown back on track. 2012 was definitely a bad year for wwe. It wasn't just one show being bad it was the entire company I mean we had John Laurinaitis vs John Cena in the main event of a PPV. If that isn't bad I don't know what is. It was like the entire writing staff decided to take 2012 off after Extreme Rules.
Smackdown went from being the best show in wwe with good matches and good story lines (which is kind of what TNA is now minus the Brooke Hogan thing) to a show not that much different from Wwe Superstars. After the Elimination Chamber they just stopped caring about it. They failed Sheamus's push and then in the wrestlemania build up I think Sheamus and Danial Bryon had only one face to face face off. Then wwe really showed us that they didn't care about smackdown by having the show's main event being 18 seconds long at wrestlemania and also making the royal rumble mean a lot less.
Next we had four or five matches with Alberto Del Rio and Sheamus which had absolutely no story line at all. The only interesting thing that happened in the feud was when Del Rio attacked Sheamus and slammed him into his car. Then they showed that video package for weeks after that. Every match these two had ended with a brogue kick. Now we have a world heavyweight champion better than Sheamus with the Big Show and now Del Rio but they still need good feuds. The feuds with Sheamus and Show have been better than with Del Rio but since that feud set the bar at the very bottom of the scale that's not saying much. The world heavyweight championship has gone down a lot in prestige as well.
How to fix it #1: give smackdown some originality
One of the reasons that I think that smackdown is struggling is is because of the end of the brand separation A lot of people were happy in 2011 when wwe ended the brand separation but I haven't noticed anything better since it's been gone. It used to separated the two brands and made them both original. Now smackdown is just a lame continuation of Raw. The only thing that's original to smackdown is the world heavyweight championship and I just talked about how bad that is right now.
At first when they had the raw supershow they would have matches with smackdown people like Cody Rhodes, Wade Barrett and Randy Orton. It was like a teaser of what smackdown was like. Now smackdown is just a continuation of what happened on raw. It doesn't have any feuds beside the world title feud that are mainly exclusive to smackdown. So there's no point in sitting through smackdown if you know that they'll talk about it on raw. Heck they'll probably even show a video package on raw of whatever happened on smackdown since they're trying to fill three hours.
That's another thing with raw being three hours a lot of the important things happen on raw. For instance a couple weeks ago Wade Barrett won the intercontinental championship from Kofi Kingston on raw. That should not have happened on raw if they wanted to happen on a show and not on a ppv it should have happened on smackdown since it's supposed to be a smackdown title. Smackdown really needs some wrestlers that seem like just smackdown guys. People that you mainly just see on smackdown. Now without the draft and brand separation it seems like all the superstars are in one basket and raw is the show that they're on. Smackdown just seems like a raw aftershow with only pretty much unimportant stuff happening on.
It's kind of like Tna Xplostion when was the last time you watched that. Now for those of you that don't know that's another show that Tna does and they don't advertise it enough on impact for one but it's just an aftershow of impact basically. It has nothing to make its self stand out. So you know that if you miss or don't watch that show you're not going to miss anything important story line wise. That's kind of what smackdown is becoming.
I think that if wwe doesn't do anything about this smackdown will turn into a show like Wwe Main Event. A show that is even kind of entertaining but is definitely a sideshow. Let's look at what happened last week on that show. Randy Orton was attacked by the Shield. That sounds kind of like what happened on raw doesn't it. So if I didn't watch Main Event last week would I have missed a major part of a story line no. Are there any story lines that mostly take place on that show no. Now I know that I sound like Daniel Bryon here but what I'm trying to say is there is no incentive to watch smackdown anymore. Now that's OK for Main Event because that is a sideshow, an extra thing to watch but do we really want that to happen with smackdown? Do we really that to smackdown to just become as important as wwe Main Event or Superstars?
With Raw going to three hours and the state that smackdown is in it looks like wwe could become a company with just one main show Raw and then a couple others that you can watch for something extra if your bored but they aren't very important. That's always been something that I think has kind of separated wwe from Tna a little bit. With Tna no matter how good it is it's only one main show. Although with wwe you watch it multiple times a week.
If wwe really wants to be a one show company then that puts a lot of pressure on raw to be very good and raw isn't very good right now it's just barely passing right now in my opinion. So raw would have to be extremely good because that's the only main show you'd see of wwe every week. If raw was bad then the entire company would be bad at that point. Where as before if raw wasn't very good then smackdown still probably was except for this summer that didn't work and it could have been partly because of this.
Let's look at the summer of 2009 A lot of people didn't really like what was happening on Raw. This was before DX had reunited and raw was getting repetitive with just John Cena, Randy Orton and Triple H having lots of matches together. Did that mean that wwe was terrible at that point no because smackdown was doing great with Jeff Hardy having CM Punk among other things.
Even if raw puts on a good show which would you rather see a three hour episode of raw or wwe television spread into different parts of the week on different shows. I would pick the latter. I talked about how raw being the only main show would put a pressure on it well it being three hours makes it even worse. Wwe has to then make all three hours interesting. Three hours is a very long time to watch a show. That's longer than most movies that you go to see in the theaters. If you went to see a three hour movie chances are you would probably get bored with it at some point.
So the viewers are probably already getting tired and bored with raw by the middle of the show even if it is a decent episode. They're probably more on twitter or doing something else than they are watching the show. So wwe would have to make the show not just good but good enough that it keeps you interested even in the later part of the show.
I talk about wwe's problem of building up young stars and keeping them at them at the top (and I will also an article about that coming out soon) but with one show the world heavyweight title would probably be unified again. So that would make it even more hard for them to fix that and there would be even less room in the title picture. Just think about 2012 CM Punk would be the only world champion that year with the world title.
So what I'm trying say in this article is that I think that smackdown is very important to wwe and they need to take it more seriously. I don't think that wwe having just raw as their main show is a good idea. I also think that one thing that will help smackdown is originality they need a set of superstars that you mostly only see on smackdown. Now I'm not saying that wwe has to bring back the draft and everything but if they could use having smackdown superstars on raw like they did back in 2011 when they used it as kind of teaser of smackdown. I think that would help a lot. Although I don't think that bringing the brand separation and the draft back would be that much of a bad idea.
This is just part one of this how to save smackdown article. In part two which will come out in the next couple of weeks I will talk about how to fix the smackdown main event among other things.
Well thanks for reading this article. Be sure to tell me your thoughts on on smackdown, the brand separation and everything else that I talked about in this article. You can give me your thoughts on twitter: Enc98 twitter.com/Enc98, on facebook: Enc Wwe http://www.facebook.com/enc.wwe. Also check out my other column here on blogger TV Movie Review http://53598.blogspot.com/. And lastly check out my youtube channel ENC98TV http://t.co/lRIk2z5q. Be sure to stay tuned for part two of how to save smackdown and other articles here on Pro Wrestling Review.
No comments:
Post a Comment