The WWE often hype up how they were so popular that they launched a second weekly broadcast, Smackdown, in 1999. However, the gimmick of a more wrestling focused show later in the week, was actually a WCW innovation. They launched Thunder on thursday nights from January 1998 onwards. It preceded Smackdown by over a year. When WWE came along with their own thursday night product, it even had Thunder's same blue branding. Unfortunately, Smackdown also ended up mirroring Thunder's negative points. At this point, the WWE show is just as irrelevant as the WCW show was. In the same way that Thunder became an after thought to Nitro, Smackdown is now just Raw's side show. The copying of the show's gimmick has literally been for better and for worse.
