This is kind of an all-round plea for WWE as a whole, but it works as a directive for Smackdown too please, please, please stop parading the same old matches and set-ups on free television. The old model of TV setting up the pay-per-views may be dying or dead but its still the case that most of your casual audience (the people who arent subscribed to the Network and maybe never will be) will be catching things for the first time on your free TV shows. If all they ever see are the same people, doing the same things in the same way, its to be expected that when theyre told about a Network live special featuring blow-off matches between those same people, theyre simply not going to care. If Dolph Ziggler has, for all intents and purposes, fought or confronted Rusev twice a week for two months without anything new happening, why would anyone set aside additional time and possibly expense to see it happen again? At the moment, feuds have a set beginning and a definitive end, if were lucky. They need a middle: things need to happen between the grudge and the settling of that grudge. WWE tends to remember that when it comes to the bigger feuds at the top end of the card, but not so much for the mid card angles. They start well (if were lucky), but then just go on, and on, until no one cares how it ends. That filler mentality is especially prevalent on Smackdown, because currently no one cares about what happens on Smackdown weve been conditioned to believe that its not must-see TV, and that nothing worth watching will ever be booked on the B-show. Tell a story. Well listen.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.