10 Booking Steps For WWE SmackDown

6. Learn A Lesson From King Of The Ring

Speaking of King of the Ring and about 40% of what I've just suggested in the previous entry, it shone a light on just how entertaining WWE's weekly product could be if they let the wrestlers just... y'know... wrestle. For a few weeks they binned the hokey soap opera and put their most talented guys in the ring together, dangling no bigger carrot in front of them than simply the desire to win.

SmackDown, historically the show that put the in-ring action above all else over the years, could benefit from this mindset heading into a brave new Fox-shaped dawn. Gable's the obvious name here but Aleister Black, Shinsuke Nakamura, Buddy Murphy, Ali, Shelton Benjamin, Apollo Crews, Andrade, and Rusev are all capable of putting on excellent and context-free slices of television.

Just one match a week, that's all it has to be, where two solid hands are thrown together and given enough time to work some magic. It's not a groundbreaking change to the current TV format but it gives wrestling purists a reason to tune in every single week.