As WWE's Brand Extension wore on, it became clear that Smackdown was becoming less and less of a priority - the show was shifted to Friday nights, then to the SyFy network, and more popular wrestlers were plucked from the brand and placed on Raw. Still, it maintained its own identity until the split was dissolved in 2011. Even after that, maybe Raw still wasn't enough for some people. Once Raw expanded to three hours in 2012, though, watching Smackdown became an exercise in masochism. Since then, WWE's flagship program has become a chore to get through, and judging from some of the material that makes it on the air, the creative team considers it a chore to book. The all-encompassing length of Monday Night Raw should be enough to satisfy even the most ravenous of wrestling fans... but it's not, because people still, implausibly, watch Smackdown. No judgments, of course - if you're into a fourth and fifth hour of weekly WWE programming featuring things that have been deemed too unimportant for Raw, that's fine... it just means you're as die-hard a fan as they come.
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013
