Welcome back to Brand Warfare! For those unfamiliar with the concept, this is the SLTD Wrestling community’s one-stop shop for finding out who has brand supremacy, Raw or SmackDown Live? Last week, 75% of you voted that the blue brand pulled away with the victory for the first time since the brand extension kicked off, bringing things to a dead heat between Raw and SmackDown Live as we hit the third round.
Who will be the one to break the tie? Well, that’s up to you of course! But before we pass the mic over to you in our community poll down below, where you can vote for which roster put on the best show this week and comment to let us know your thoughts, let’s pass it over to three of SLTD’s finest!
Tom Robinson, Colin Hebert and SLTD Wrestling’s very own “face that runs the place”, Tybo Ledson bring you their personal observations on what went down this week below:
Colin Hebert – @ColinHebert614 – The Curtain Jerker
“Raw this week seemed to be one of those episodes we’ve seen from the past few years. It dragged on with only a couple of high spots. The Kevin Owens-Chris Jericho pairing confuses me because I believe that Owens should be in a higher spot on the card than playing second fiddle to Jericho at this point.
The whole “re-enactment” of Rusev and Lana’s wedding went just like any other wrestling wedding went, with somebody, in this case Roman Reigns, to spoil it. There was no Brock Lesnar or Sami Zayn, and Finn Balor and Seth Rollins only did promos to further promote their WWE Universal Title match at SummerSlam.
Even the meeting of the GMs was awkward until Rusev and Cesaro came out. When Foley granted Cesaro his mandatory U.S. Title match as the final segment of the show, I thought they missed the boat and could have pulled the trigger on Cesaro and give him the U.S. Title. But that ended up being the highlight of Raw.
On SmackDown Live, even with no AJ Styles and John Cena, they managed to pull off a decent show. It could be the fact they only have 2 hours to fill. The top storyline on SmackDown Live was furthered in proper fashion with Dolph Ziggler getting a big tag-team victory with Dean Ambrose over the Wyatt Family to further position himself as a threat to Ambrose’s WWE World Title. He immediately got laid out by Ambrose as a receipt for the opening segment of the show when Ziggler “accidentally” superkicked him.
And I do know I am in the minority, but I love the Eva Marie gimmick. Her coming out as the greatest thing since sliced bread and then not being able to compete due to injury or wardrobe malfunction is a cheap way to get heat, but she is getting it. They pushed the new women on SmackDown Live as Alexa Bliss and Carmella got victories in their WWE debuts and made it look like SmackDown Live could have a legitimate women’s division.
American Alpha made quick work of another tag team and then we saw a brawl featuring all the tag teams on SmackDown Live to try to showcase their tag-team division. When Randy Orton is the 4th best thing on your show this week, you must have done something right.”
Winner – SmackDown Live
Tybo Ledson – @Tybo_SLTD – Tybo Talks
“Honestly, before this brand spit happened I was convinced that regardless of the roster Raw would be the dominant brand purely because it was Raw, but that doesn’t seem to be the case as the weeks go on.
I think the main issue with Raw right now is that they have to fill 3 hours, and they are not doing a very good job of it. Put very simply – the roster is not strong enough. There is not enough of them for starters, and there is not enough depth of character in the mid-card, to build up to a strong main event.
In the past three weeks we have seen both Finn Bálor (Week One) and Cesaro (Week Three) do double duty on a Raw show. Now I’m not complaining about seeing either guy wrestle twice, but is the roster really that thin?
WWE need to review the 3-hour show. I have never had an issue with it ’til the brand split, but the last two weeks have felt very long. I just hope the addition of the cruiserweight division adds some much needed excitement.
SmackDown once again delivered a solid show. Another great week of promos, and the tease of Bray Wyatt in the WWE Championship picture shows that SmackDown are already planting seeds for after SummerSlam. The future addition of a Women’s Championship for SmackDown will be a great touch, I just hope they do the same for the tag-team division, but they need more teams before that happens.
So, with another lacklustre feel to Raw and the solid effort from SmackDown, even with the show lacking both John Cena and AJ Styles once again, I have to say the best show this week was SmackDown.”
Winner – SmackDown Live
Tom Robinson – @TomRobinson5199 – Armbar Analysis
“We’re only a few weeks away from SummerSlam and it seemed that this week was more like the calm before the storm. There was no Randy Orton, Brock Lesnar, John Cena, AJ Styles or Finn Balor appearing live on Raw or SmackDown. The real work was to promote the rest of the SummerSlam card, as opposed to just focusing on the main-event programs. However, which show did the best job?
The thing that really got to me when watching Raw this week was that it almost seemed like the exact same show from last week just without Brock Lesnar. There were matches like Darren Young vs Titus O’Neil and Cesaro vs Sheamus that were both done on last week’s show. The build to Seth Rollins vs Finn Balor was left to non-wrestling segments once again, with Seth cutting a really long promo while Finn was given a video package to promote the “Demon King” within him. Roman Reigns confronting Rusev was done last week too.
The idea behind Raw getting more draft picks than SmackDown was because, with the extra hour, they needed more wrestlers to cope with the time. However, this show seemed depleted in creativity, and in stars. Heck, Sami Zayn and Nia Jax were both missing this week. If you’ve got the extra stars in your arsenal, why not use them?
On the other hand, SmackDown was a much easier show to watch as a whole. The main storyline going into the show was the idea of Dolph Ziggler and Dean Ambrose needing to get along to fight the Wyatt Family. The opening segment gave Ziggler and Ambrose reason to not fully trust each other with the accidental super kick. They had words backstage and then did the tag-team match in the main event. Following the match, Ambrose got Ziggler back for the super kick to huge “yes” chants and cheers.
It was a simple show to book, unlike Raw which seemed all out of place. Cena and AJ not being on the show did hurt the show a little but at least they did a good job at building towards the future a little bit. American Alpha got a chance to show off, Alexa Bliss picked up a win in her debut and even Carmella made Natalya submit.
SmackDown was the clear winner of this week’s Brand Warfare for a second week in a row. While SmackDown seemed fresh this week, Raw didn’t feel different from last week at all. There are people that will defend Raw by saying that it was only worse than SmackDown because they have the third hour.
While I did mention the third hour last week, it’s still down to the creative team to keep the show fresh every week and to give people a reason to want to watch it. Heck, Raw was the superior show in the first week of SLTD’s Brand Warfare as it seemed so much more different than before. They have to try and do it again every single week, Otherwise, SmackDown may end up actually BEATING Raw in the ratings every week! Raw’s viewership was down to under three million this week so it’s not inconceivable in the slightest!”
Winner – SmackDown Live
For the second straight week, SmackDown Live whitewashes Monday Night Raw with all three of SLTD’s personal panel of judges leaning towards the blue brand. After Raw secured the first victory in round one, it looked like Mick Foley and Stephanie McMahon might be edging ahead with the superior roster, but as luck would have it, SmackDown Live has been dominating the field. Will they maintain the lead, however? The decision is yours!
Did SmackDown Live actually pull off a better show for the second week in a row, or will the red roster be heading into the go-home show for SummerSlam with two points to SmackDown Live’s one? We’ll be back next weekend at the exact same time to let you know who leads the pack as SLTD Wrestling’s Brand Warfare continues.
Follow @SLTDWrestling for more!
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Self-Professed Conversational Wizard.
Admin, Editor and Writer for SLTD Wrestling.
Creator of 'Under the Spotlight'.
Studying Computing in Games Development.
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