I’m sure you’ve heard the news by now that as of July 19th, Smackdown will be officially airing LIVE! This is something I’ve been wanting for years, and now it’s finally happening. Not only that, but it’ll be changing from Thursday nights to Tuesday nights, AND there’ll be a brand split.
As of writing, there are very few concrete plans in store as far as titles go, or which superstars will be on which brand, so I’m going to look into 5 things Smackdown needs when it goes live.
Make Smackdown just as important as RAW
To continue having RAW as the ‘a show’ would be shooting themselves in the foot before they’d even started, because there’d be no real purpose in rebranding Smackdown at all.
There needs to be star power, there should be title matches, as well as debuting superstars and iconic returns. Everything WWE currently only really showcases on RAW, should be included on Smackdown.
Make Smackdown a must see show, get people talking about it every week, which can actually happen now that it’s not just a set up for RAW angles.
The show needs to have a must see feel about it, the past few months I’ve not personally felt any need to tune into Smackdown, as nothing of importance/significance ever happens. This needs to change.
No RAW rebounds
Seeing as Smackdown is going to be its own unique show, I see no reason to continuously remind us of everything that happened on Monday’s episode of RAW. I feel it could be mentioned on commentary, but there’s no need to show is recaps, or matches that were featured on the show, as it would be deemed as irrelevant. Those superstars on RAW would be exclusive to that show, and therefore storyline wise they’d have no real importance being shown on Smackdown.
In honestly, likewise with RAW (not that they were as frequent) but there will be no need to show highlights of the other show.
Have John Cena on Smackdown
I would assume Roman Reigns and John Cena will be split between both brands, with both being the poster boys for each show, but I would love WWE to mix things up and have Cena as the main star on Smackdown. The reason for this is that Cena never really appears on Smackdown since he made that switch to RAW ironically during the 2005 draft.
Cena might not be to everyones taste, but there’s no doubt that he brings eyes and star power to any show he appears on. His presence would instantly give a different feel about Smackdown because as I’ve mentioned earlier, his appearances on the show are very rare and it’d seem fresh, new and different.
Have a neutral General Manager
Something that I find really repetitive, is the heel general manager, y’know the ones that just constantly stack the deck against the ‘good guys’ in favour of the bad.
Classic examples of this are obviously The Authority, Vickie Guerrero and Eric Bischoff and although I quite enjoyed the Bischoff era, I feel Smackdown would really benefit from a general manager who is neutral and unpredictable.
The problem is, I’m stumped for ideas on who that could be.
The obvious solution which I’m pretty certain WWE will go with is having Shane & Stephanie run a brand each, and although they’re pretty neutral right now, Stephanie is a natural heel and no doubt will be in the very near future.
I’d quite like to see Paul Heyman given another go as general manager. It benefits the talent when they’re in the ring cutting promos alongside someone talented on the mic instead of a blithering mess (Mike Adamle anyone?) or someone who sounds like he’s reading a script from a book (shout out to Theodore Long).
Don’t have RAW/Smackdown only PPV events
At the moment, WWE can barely put on a full pay per view event of quality (mainly due to lack of creative booking), so trying to have an all Smackdown roster PPV would make the matches very repetitive and tedious very quickly.
What’d be much better is to have 3/4 matches from each show on each card, which would mean that the PPV’s were made up of matches properly built up and the 3/4 main feuds on the show would get featured and make the quality of the events a lot better. I don’t really see the need to have ‘jobber’ matches on Smackdown, if WWE do insist on having skits with the likes of R-Truth/Goldust and Social Outcasts to name a few, they could make them into actual feuds or storylines, rather than meaningless appearances here and there that are forgotten and meaningless by the next week.
This would allow WWE to rotate title contenders and challengers and not only help elevate talent, but give them a platform to impress and grab the brass rings that are spoken about so often.
What do YOU think is essential to Smackdown’s re-branding?
Is a GM necessary? Should they bring back the European Title?
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