6 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Oct 7)

2. Brand Supremacy Via Network Executives

Hoo boy, that wonderful term “brand supremacy” has resurfaced on WWE TV. We heard this term a lot during the earlier WWE brand split and at Survivor Series each year, but now, it’s taken on a new life.

With SmackDown moving to FOX, the brand supremacy deal has ramped up tremendously, with the announcers talking about the upcoming draft ad nauseum Monday night. But they didn’t just talk about Raw versus SmackDown.

They talked about USA versus FOX.

Yes, the networks are battling too! That gave way to some ludicrous comments about network executives holing up in war rooms discussing which superstars they want on their shows. Now to be fair, the networks do have some preferences for who they would like to see on their programs, but painting this as USA and FOX suits doing the analysis and drafting wrestlers… can any wrestling fan really be bothered to care about that?

It’s just such a silly, stupid talking point, and the fact they mentioned it a half-dozen times – Jerry Lawler at one point talked about how the USA execs really wanted Asuka, for example – magnified how ridiculous it was.

Never would you think that just having different McMahons on each program drafting wrestlers would be a preferred option. But here we are.