10 HUGE Problems With WWE's Raw Vs SmackDown Survivor Series Concept

SmackDown Live! got off to a roaring start in the post-Under Siege world by listing longest reigning company commentator Michael Cole as 'Tom Phillips', despite the former NXT announcer's mysterious 'assignment' keeping him from blue brand duties this month.

The phone fornicator may be the lucky one if Raw's closing segment implies how unstable WWE's working conditions will be over the upcoming month. Stagehands and inanimate objects alike weren't safe from the wrath of a blue-shirted army blindly doing the bidding of Shane McMahon because it's Survivor Series time and...that's just what wrestlers do?

That's the conclusion viewers were forced to jump to anyway. As sure as Cells, Chambers and Chairs appear on demand as and when the company pay-per-view calendar randomly determines their usage, wrestlers can now count Survivor Series as the time of year to viciously assault friends and colleagues under a red (or blue) mist of artificial fury.

In leading his roster on a show-closing Raw raid, McMahon helped craft an impressive visual to kickoff this year's hostilities, was it all an empty gesture? The company may have been aiming for scenes akin to famous beatdowns from the Nexus, but the wafer-thin motivations undermined virtually all of the brutality.

Spared of having to plug Jolly Ranchers on Tuesday Night, Tom Phillips at least didn't have to encourage audiences to 'Keep On Sucking'. Viewers were presumably begging for the opposite.

Dean Ambrose was destroyed on this week's Raw. Besieged by SmackDown Live! stars after briefly gaining ground with a steel chair, he was ripped limb from limb by blue brand wolves aiming to put the 'Lunatic Fringe' and every other Monday Night loyalist in their place.

Only, back in April, Ambrose was on SmackDown himself. In fact, he was Daniel Bryan and Shane McMahon's very first choice in the 2016 Draft, and would be carried aloft as the hero of the hour by many of those now decimating him when he defeated Seth Rollins to ensure the WWE Championship took up permanent residence on Tuesdays.

It was never explained why he left for Raw in April's Superstar Shake-up. Nobody's switches were, and yet mere months later, he's being killed for working where he works, and willing to die for that very cause. He's a pillock for giving a toss, but not at fault for his oppressors showing similar rage. Especially front-line sh*tkicker Rusev.

'The Bulgarian Brute' was another April trade, and made no secret of his utter disdain for SmackDown Live! He then made demands of McMahon and Bryan that weren't met, and subsequently proceeded to lose every major match. He's actively acknowledged how little life in the 'Land Of Opportunity' has done for him, and brainlessly gone to war for it all the same.

It is the exact opposite of how a predetermined form of entertainment is supposed to work. Everybody looks bad, even though precisely nobody has to.