When the WWE announced that it would be going to brand specific rosters, many fans and wrestling pundits assumed that this move was done in order to improve the standing of Smackdown. Smackdown, which has been on multiple nights in the last couple of years, had seen lean times since the show’s heyday in 2002-2004. Once the first WWE brand split ended in 2011, the show became the WWE’s “B Show” that no one cared about, something that could be seen in their dismal ratings on the SyFy network.
But a funny thing happened after the WWE had its draft in July and the official brand split occurred...Smackdown Live started to beat Monday Night Raw. I’m not talking about ratings in particular but in quality. It seemed that fans preferred the show’s simplistic presentation as opposed to Raw’s convoluted and senseless storylines. The “Keep it Simple Stupid” mantra seems to be on the wall of the Smackdown crew and not on the Raw side at all.
What makes Smackdown Live so much better than Monday Night Raw ? We have three reasons as to why Tuesday nights are better than Monday nights and we will start with the most obvious reason.
Smackdown Live Is Two Hours As To Opposed To Raw’s Three Hours
Three hours is a long time to do anything, let alone watching wrestling every single week. Monday Night Raw becomes a cumbersome show to watch by 9:30 every week and people begin to tune out or even stop watching the show by their 11 pm runover. On the other hand, Smackdown Live is just two hours, which is what a standard wrestling show should be and it moves quickly. It’s not Vince Russo fast-paced where it’s ADD television, but instead it's a fast-paced show with meaningful things happening throughout. This leads to the next reason Smackdown Live is so much better than Monday Night Raw.
Less Talking, More Action On Smackdown Live
In order to fill three hours, Monday Night Raw needs to have long, drawn out talking segments at the top of almost every hour. This leads to 15-20 minute segments of two angry rivals just talking to each other in the ring and boring the crowd to death. Unfortunately that is the perils of having an endless show, you have to fill time and you can't have 20 matches a week to satisfy the crowd. You need pointless talking segments.
Smackdown Live also has its own talking segments, but it’s a lot less than Raw. The difference between the Raw and Smackdown Live’s talking segments are two-fold. Smackdown Live’s are much shorter and the talking segments usually either leads to a match or furthers a storyline. It’s not mindless talking where a match is put together because that’s how you supposed to end a talking segment.
Fans appreciate less talking and more action and that is why Smackdown Live is better than Raw. The third and final reason for why Smackdown Live is better than Monday Night Raw is also pretty simple.
Better In-Ring Product And Characters
I put these together because they go together. Smackdown Live has the characters that fans either love or hate, but at least there is a reaction to those characters. The crowd is supposed to hate Carmella so they boo Carmella. They are supposed to love Dean Ambrose so they cheer Dean Ambrose. That goes to character development and Smackdown Live has done a good job in the first months of the brand split to do that. Raw, on the other hand, has never been good with character development and it shows when the crowd has no reaction to much of what’s on their show.
With the audience behind the product comes better in-ring matches. The talent is trying out different things within their matches to increase crowd reaction, whether good or bad. On the flipside, Raw is stale with Roman Reigns hitting his three moves of doom every week in succession and the crowd is bored. Smackdown Live is giving its talent the tools to succeed while Raw is not helping its talent at all.
Is Raw unsavable? Probably not. But unless the show is reduced to two hours, Monday Night Raw will be what it is. Long, boring and monotonous. Smackdown Live is the best show in the WWE and while it still seems like the redheaded stepchild of the company, fans are flocking to the show and talking about it more than Raw and it will continue unless the WWE looks at Smackdown Live as the perfect template and not just an outlier.
