11 Things WWE Got Wrong In 2017

4. Making SmackDown Live The B Show

SmackDown Lumberjacks
WWe.com

Everything was going pretty well for SmackDown Live following the 2016 draft. Dean Ambrose was proving to be something of a revelation as WWE Champion, Bray Wyatt and Randy Orton were building an intriguing story, AJ Styles and John Cena were having incredible matches and Becky Lynch was finally getting the attention she deserves. For the first time in forever, the blue show felt as important as Monday Night RAW.

As 2017 comes to a close, SmackDown has well and truly been established as the B Show once more. The show didn’t do as badly in the Superstar Shake-Up as first thought, but the wind was well and truly ripped out of the sails by a 170 day WWE Championship reign for Jinder Mahal (more on that shortly).

SmackDown seemed to grind to a halt as Jinder held onto the title, with many stars going missing and everything generally being covered in a strange malaise. RAW hasn’t exactly set the world alight, but everything that made SmackDown essential viewing in 2016 has been stripped away in 2017.

The WWE Championship feels like a secondary title now, which is impressive when you consider that the Universal Championship was barely on television all year.

WWE needs to elevate SmackDown Live all over again.

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Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.