10 Ways To Re-Brand WWE SmackDown

It's time to make the Thursday night SmackDown more distinctive than it's Monday night colleague...

By Kenny McIntosh /

Since SmackDown has moved to the USA Network, it hasn't really changed as a show apart from the addition of Mauro Ranallo on the commentary team. For the most part, there are multi man matches and mid card matches that have no consequence and barely even merit a mention on RAW. Fifteen years ago, every RAW would begin with a video package highlighting all the big happenings from SmackDown the previous Thursday. Nowadays there's no need for that because absolutely nothing important happens on the show. With the move to the USA Network, wrestling journalists and fans alike hoped that SmackDown would receive some much needed attention and the show would become more than just a pedestrian, stand alone Thursday show. Sadly, that hasn't happened yet so it'll be interesting to see how the ratings go in the coming weeks and months. While WWE is a big cable TV brand, if the SmackDown show continues as it is presented currently, the ratings may decline more and more as time goes on and cause the USA Network to drop the show eventually. With that in mind, here are ten ways I would look to re-brand SmackDown in order to make it more important and something that you can't miss each week.