10 Ways To Make WWE Smackdown A ‘Must-See’ Show Again

3. Make Smackdown A €˜Wrestling€™ Show Again

This is by no means to say that the competition currently on Smackdown is not good wrestling. But as has been mentioned several times, Smackdown is more or less an offshoot of Raw where major storylines aren€™t advanced in a terribly meaningful way. There isn€™t enough setting the show apart from Raw, so one way to remedy that is to focus on wrestling. During the early stages of the Brand Extension Era, Smackdown was known as a better wrestling program, with the Smackdown Six (Angle, Benoit, Edge, Mysterio, Eddie and Chavo Guerrero) battling for months on end in classic after classic. Smackdown also was home to the WWE Cruiserweight Championship and the smaller wrestlers who lit up the ring. And Smackdown also had a hot rookie world champ in Brock Lesnar during this time. If you liked quality matches as part of your wrestling viewing, you tuned to Smackdown. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iwRK3qdiKw By comparison, the most recent Smackdown had five matches lasting less than 28 minutes, with three matches taking less than six minutes combined. And the longest match ended in a DQ after 13 minutes. That is not going to draw viewers in, especially if nothing of consequence happens. WWE could commit to allowing some of its top stars have longer matches and downplay angles. That would provide viewers with a reason to tune in €“ Raw can be a crapshoot as to whether fans get a couple good-to-great matches or just a bunch of filler €“ knowing that there will be one or two solid matches on Smackdown.