10 Wrestling Reboots More Famous Than The Original

10. SmackDown (Thunder)

In the modern era, a weekly slot on one of America's major television networks is almost a prerequisite for any fledgling wrestling promotion with ambitions of becoming mainstream. Every wrestling company worth its salt has boasted a slot on prime time, the most obvious examples being WWE's Monday Night Raw and WCW's Monday Nitro.

Though Vince McMahon likes to take credit for this trend, debuting All-American Wrestling on the USA Network back in 1983, he can't say the same for the secondary show. In fact, it was bitter competitors WCW who beat him to the punch, debuting on TBS with Thunder in January 1998 - a full year before SmackDown got its slot on UPN.

The WWE chairman would probably argue that he had plans to launch a second show at some point regardless, but at the very least it must be conceded that news of Ted Turner landing another lucrative TV deal forced him to put them into action more quickly.

As for which is more famous, by simple virtue of the fact that Thunder went off the airwaves after its parent company collapsed in 2001, and SmackDown is still around today, fast approaching its 1,000th episode, you've got to give this one to Vince.