WWE brand extension 2016. Three months on. Thoughts?

[The Natural]

The roster split coming back is a big development with wrestlers and championships exclusive to RAW and Smackdown.

The first RAW with RAW exclusive wrestlers was the post Battleground 2016 PPV RAW on the 25th of July and Smackdown Live on the 26th of July made up of Smackdown wrestlers. On first impressions, you had to give the nod to RAW. Now Smackdown Live is the better television show doing more in two hours than RAW with the extra hour. There's clarity/focus in the title picture with champions and challengers. Smackdown Live's Miz vs. Dolph Ziggler feud for the WWE Intercontinetal Championship has raised it's prestige to it's highest mark since 2009 I'd say. Smackdown Live's women's division booking is superior to RAW, fuck you can extend that statement from Smackdown Live to RAW period. This is without Smackdown Live having the "marquee names" and wrestlers more suited to the show, poor Cesaro particularly.

With the return of the brand split, you now get RAW or Smackdown now at WWE Live. It’s a positive if you get the brand you want whereas before WWE Live was made up of wrestlers not specific to a show. I'd rather see the RAW roster as there's more of my favourites: Roman Reigns, Kevin Owens, Chris Jericho, Sami Zayn, Cesaro, Sheamus, Charlotte, Sasha Banks and Bayley. I found out in July we were getting RAW as I wanted.

I’ll get to see Sasha Banks for the first time, she was at different shows in November 2015 and April 2016 to the ones I attended. Banks is my favourite women’s wrestler and I didn’t expect Chris Jericho. It’s going to be something seeing Chris Jericho live after watching him for so long. Jericho’s 2016 is his best year since 2009.

Sorry for length of post.

[The Green Meanie]

So, this comic summed up week one pretty well:

 

The first Smackdown episode was a disaster. I can remember we were getting ready for Smackdown to be the b-show again. BOY HOW THINGS CHANGE. Raw feels like a marathon with only a few bits and pieces, I find myself switching between it and other shows. Smackdown has consistently been the better show with stories that make sense and angles I'm interested in. Would Raw be the better show if it was only two hours also? I'm not 100% sure, to be honest.

[Nice Guy Eddie]

Raw needs a new creative team that are actually wrestling people. Most importantly, Vince and Bucky Beaver need to each be locked in a trunk and thrown overboard to the deepest depths of the Pacific Ocean.

[PetrolCB]

Vince would somehow make it out. They should be locked away by top men. 

[Cristobal]

I think Raw doesn't get enough credit for what it was trying to do those first couple of weeks. One, they recognized that the top of the card needed fresh faces, and especially a new top babyface all elements of the crowd could get behind. Two, they recognized that the product as a whole had gotten stale, and needed wholesale change down to the sets, the commentary team, and how matches were shot.

The problem is that everything kind of fell off. The need for a top new babyface didn't go away when Finn got hurt, but instead of trying to work Cesaro or Sami into the role, they just turned Seth and plugged him into a feud with Owens. Camera work has gone back to how it was before, we've gone back to anyone not in an angle Vince cares about being doomed to stagnate while anyone in an angle Vince DOES care about is going to be over-produced to hell and back, and die a thousand deaths trying to get shit like "sparklecrotch" over.

Meanwhile, while SmackDown isn't changing the face of wrestling as we know it, angles are booked well, wrestlers up and down the card are getting time to shine, and the authority figures are, with the exception of the Bryan/Miz stuff, plot devices to advance the story, not the central focus of same.

[Nice Guy Eddie]

1 hour ago, PetrolCB said:

Vince would somehow make it out. They should be locked away by top men. 

No, no he wouldn't. It's not like he's Kramer waking up in a sack in the East River.

[Sublime]

The trick would be to use a shipping container instead of a trunk, a shipping container with an interior made to be a weight room, Vince would be too busy to realize what was happening until it was too late.

[PetrolCB]

11 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

No, no he wouldn't. It's not like he's Kramer waking up in a sack in the East River.

That's true, because Vince never sleeps. 

Listen to this idea. A restaurant that serves only beef wraps and ketchup. 

What d'you call it?

"BW & Ks" What d'you think?

I think you need more sleep.

[Niners Fan in CT]

It would only take a couple weeks for RAW to turn this around.  They have a great roster, they do not have engaging story lines and they have not spent enough time on character development. They haven't utilized everyone to the best of their abilities either. 

Less Foley and Steph is a start.  Then they have to get to developing the characters of the cruisers and give them more air time.  The video package for Swann was good. Do more of that.

Seth out of the title picture would be good too. Jericho and Owens do have a good story going,  Seth needs to pair up with someone else. 

With the women, hopefully they move past Sasha and Charlotte.   I'd like to see Sasha paired with Emma or Nia Jax.  Then she can turn on Bayley heading into Mania season.

[Go2Sleep]

Basically Raw got lots of wrestling talent with minimal writing talent and SD got lots of writing talent with minimal wrestling talent.

The whole thing has been a waste of time in my opinion. It hasn't made anything significantly better or worse, it just moved stuff around. They would've been better off keeping the roster together and managing the shows better. Like if a person/angle gets a lot of time on Raw, they only get a short segment on SD if they're on at all and vice versa.

[The Natural]

Thanks for the opinions!

Interesting how Smackdown Live gets a near shutout with the TV poll but there's a tie for the roster you want to see live.

[Cristobal]

Raw's problem is not any lack of wrestling talent. Even without the cruisers, a Raw house show right now is probably going to have some combination of Rollins/Reigns/Zayn vs Owens/Jericho/Rusev, unscripted promos by Enzo and New Day, Cesaro, Sasha, Bayley.

[JonnyLaw]

1 hour ago, Cristobal said:

Raw's problem is not any lack of wrestling talent. Even without the cruisers, a Raw house show right now is probably going to have some combination of Rollins/Reigns/Zayn vs Owens/Jericho/Rusev, unscripted promos by Enzo and New Day, Cesaro, Sasha, Bayley.

Yep.

As awesome as Ellsworth and Beauty & the ManBeast are on Smackdown, that's not who I'd want to watch at a house show.  I'd rather go to a Raw house show and see all the guys I wished were on Smackdown.

[Craig H]

Cristobal nailed it 100% with his two posts. Raw had such a fresh feeling to it that they quickly made stale by abandoning the newer camera work and going back to the same old shit. Why even sign Gallows and Anderson to job them out? Why program them against the New Day and keep having the New Day always go over? I love the New Day, but they do this shit all the time where they wait forever to make a title change and then it has such little impact.

Cesaro and Sheamus got programmed together in a feud to just give each other something to do in the most boring way possible, a best of 7 series that didn't have a conclusive ending, only for Foley to force them be a tag team.

Creative continues to have no clue how to use Rollins. He's only a babyface because he's using Vince's lines. He should be used like how SDL uses Styles, except as a babyface.

Roman continues to be a face acting like a heel and the heel he's programmed against winds up acting like a face.

It's just the same old shit.

SDL has given many of those guys a purpose. I know a lot of people shit on Dolph, but the Dolph/Miz feud actually got me to care about Dolph and it had a great payoff. AJ Styles as world champion has been awesome. I'm enjoying shades of gray Cena way more than I ever enjoyed him before. The women's division lacks the knee jerk feel of Raw's women's division and the tag division, while shallow, is better developed than Raw's. FFS, Rhyno and Heath Slater were involved in one of the best storylines of the year and it was all really simple shit, but it made sense. And the production on SDL is better. I can't explain it, but the look and feel of SDL is just different than Raw.