Welcome back to Brand Warfare, SLTD Wrestling’s one stop shop for all things Red vs. Blue!
Last week, despite one of our weekly judges opting out of the vote due to both brands being dissatisfactory in their weekly display of simulated violence, SmackDown Live still secured another win, with two votes from Team SLTD and 66% of the fan vote – even with the return of Goldberg to aid Monday Night Raw!
This takes SmackDown to an 11-2 lead over the competition, and if it wasn’t before, it’s definitely safe to say who’s going to come out of this one victorious. Nevertheless, with a brand-exclusive pay-per-view to their advantage this weekend, who’s to say Raw can’t earn at least one more victory before Brand Warfare is laid to rest?
Let’s check in with Team SLTD to see if it’s a possibility this week.
Colin Hebert – @ColinHebert614 – The Curtain Jerker
“With this being the go-home show for the Raw pay-per-view, Hell in a Cell, and with that having a historic triple main event, featuring the first-ever women’s HIAC match, you’d think Raw would be on fire and put on a first-class show, proving to everybody why it’s the premier brand of the WWE. You’d be wrong.
It seems like the Raw brand has everything backwards these days. The only mandatory viewing on Raw is Chris Jericho, who is supposed to be a heel but gets the loudest ovations of everybody.
His promos and matches have overshadowed the WWE Universal Champion Kevin Owens, whose reign is starting to look like Jericho’s first world title reign, just listless.
They even made the mistake of having Brock Lesnar, another heel, return to WWE programming in his hometown of Minneapolis. They couldn’t have possibly thought that the fans would boo their hometown hero, did they? It was the most disastrous promo of Paul Heyman’s career.
I really didn’t like anything on the show this week. The Hell in a Cell event looks like the worst in WWE in quite some time, and I don’t know how Raw will ever be able to come back from this.
SmackDown Live had probably their worst show of the brand extension last week, but they were able to rebound.
James Ellsworth is still somewhat involved in the main event picture with WWE World Champion AJ Styles and Dean Ambrose. I still believe he’s owed another title shot. But it looks like there could be a mini-program between him and Ambrose after Ellsworth cost Ambrose a match against Styles. Without Ambrose’s help, I can’t see Ellsworth remaining in the title picture, which is a good thing.
The women were a great focus for the first hour of the show. SmackDown Women’s Champion Becky Lynch returned and was confronted by #1 contender Alexa Bliss. After some very personal words toward each other, Bliss knocked out Lynch and spray-painted her back yellow, the colour of a coward. Say whatever you want, I’d rather have Lynch-Bliss over Charlotte-Sasha any day of the week now. Bliss is turning into a main player in WWE.
Also, the SmackDown Live women’s Survivor Series team has its captain in Nikki Bella. She defeated Natalya, which also means Natalya will not be on the team. This must mean no SmackDown Women’s title match at Survivor Series due to the lack of depth on the roster.
All in all, SmackDown Live just flowed much better than RAW once again. This was one of the easiest Brand Warfare decisions I’ve had to make.”
Winner: SmackDown Live
Tybo Ledson – @Tybo_SLTD – Tybo Talks
“Another week gone, and another week of Red vs Blue. Is it even a contest anymore? I usually don’t start with such harsh words for either brand, but Raw really dropped the ball this week.
Raw was not a terrible show, it was basically at the usual standard. It was watchable – long, but it was watchable. As always it had moments when it was great; the New Day vs. Cesaro and Sheamus for example, and the dynamic of the triple threat main event was interesting to watch.
The major downfall for me was the Lesnar/Heyman segment. After 20 years of watching Heyman, this was the first time I had lost all faith in him. As a man who prides himself on getting the crowd pumped after just a promo, Heyman having no idea what to do with the crowd chanting for Lesnar really shocked me, and really disappointed me. It feels like the match at Survivor Series has lost all momentum.
SmackDown as always is the standard bearer for WWE programming. Team Blue seems so much more fluid, so much easier to watch and so much more entertaining. I think it helps a lot that I personally am far more invested in most (if not all) of the SmackDown storylines and feuds. It feels like there is a lot more happening on SmackDown, they don’t waste a second of television time and I think
Raw could learn from this. Raw promo segments seem to be very long, whereas SmackDown is far punchier. My only issue with SmackDown right now is James Ellsworth. Sorry, it was fun a few weeks ago, but it’s getting dragged out a bit now.”
Winner: SmackDown Live
Rachel Brimble – @Chica_SLTD – Wrestle Chica
“Another week in the battle of the brands and if I’m being honest with you, this was another week where Raw had all the potential to be the winner and I don’t know if it actually lived up to the hype.
I’ll be honest, I’m not really 100% sure on everything that actually happened on this week’s RAW as I think, similar to previous weeks, that it just doesn’t flow as well as SmackDown does. At the minute, the Cruiserweight Championship is building up a good rivalry and they are actually putting something behind it like they are with the Universal Championship, but everything else is just put together at the last minute without any real explanation.
I like that Sami Zayn is standing up to Braun Strowman, but why he’s doing this hasn’t really been explained, and now he’s just getting his ass kicked like everyone else has.
To me at times it can feel like Raw see that they have all these Superstars so just think “let’s just get them out there” and don’t give any thought to it, like having the arm wrestling match, what even was that!
The Enzo and Big Cass introduction was amazing to have no mic and have the entire crowd saying everything with you word for word was fantastic and shows how over Enzo and Big Cass actually are. Foley carried the contract signing and made the dangers of Hell in a Cell more of a reality for Sasha and Charlotte, but I do not want to see Charlotte becoming champion again. Been there, done that, and it’s well and truly time to move on.
Brock and Heyman – there are no words to describe it and the big go-home was a massive let down that is turning a match I didn’t really want to see into a match I am actually dreading!
SmackDown again flowed nicely and like I said last week the investment in every superstar is so much better and makes you want to keep watching. I love that nothing is kind of too much, with them willing to do anything they need to keep a story line going and it was great to see Orton potentially siding with Wyatt but only teasing it!
The fact that SmackDown don’t have a PPV this week has helped them put more time and effort into creating their Survivor Series teams and seeing the Hype Bros and Nikki Bella going through to be on Team SmackDown was great, especially as Nikki is able to do an STF a whole lot better than Cena!
What I loved that even though Nikki was competing to be Captain Nikki her rivalry with Carmella still goes on instead of just being forgotten about like it could have been in the past.
Again I didn’t really get the whole Spirit Squad thing, and why Alexa painted a yellow line on Becky I completely didn’t get, but what a main event! Having Ellsworth cost Ambrose his championship opportunity was genius and even though I didn’t like him in the title picture having him on the sideline does work!
So again for me is has to be Team Blue for the win and RAW really needs to do something to wow us, because at the minute they are falling massively behind.”
Winner: SmackDown Live
Once again, a whitewash victory with regards to SLTD Wrestling has Monday Night Raw in a really tough spot. Its lengthy show, poor booking and illogical strategy with reference to Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar’s unholy return to the WWE this week has SmackDown sitting pretty right on top of the mountain for yet another week.
But perhaps you disagree? Do you think Raw managed to edge past SmackDown Live this week as we head into what has been marketed as a truly ground-breaking Hell in a Cell pay-per-view?
Let your voice be heard by commenting below, tweeting us your thoughts and most importantly, voting in the official Brand Warfare poll to make your mark on the series and play a deciding factor in who wins this week’s installment.
Follow @STLDWrestling for more!
Which brand put on the better show this week? #BrandWarfare
— SLTD Wrestling (@SLTDWrestling) October 29, 2016
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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