Tuesday Night SMACKDOWN Updates/Discussion/Spoilers

[Black Death]

how so?


at work at the moment

[jagilki]

Raw:

General Manager: Mick Foley
Commissioner: Stephanie McMahon
Seth Rollins
Charlotte
Finn Bálor
Roman Reigns
Brock Lesnar
The New Day
Sami Zayn
Sasha Banks
Chris Jericho
Rusev & Lana
Kevin Owens
Enzo & Cass
Gallows & Anderson
Big Show
Nia Jax
Neville
Cesaro
Sheamus
Golden Truth
Titus O'Neil
Paige
Darren Young
Sin Cara
Jack Swagger
The Dudley Boyz
Summer Rae
Mark Henry
Braun Strowman
Bo Dallas
Shining Stars
Alicia Fox
Dana Brooke
Curtis Axel
SmackDown:

General Manager: Daniel Bryan
Commissioner: Shane McMahon
Dean Ambrose
A.J. Styles
John Cena
Randy Orton
Bray Wyatt
Becky Lynch
The Miz & Maryse
Baron Corbin
American Alpha
Dolph Ziggler
Natalya
Alberto Del Rio
The Usos
Demon Kane
Kalisto
Naomi
The Ascension
Zack Ryder
Apollo Crews
Alexa Bliss
Breezango
Eva Marie
The Vaudevillains
Erick Rowan
Mojo Rawley
Carmella

Undrafted

Commissioner Heath Slater
GM: Heath Slater

Heath Slater

[Black Death]

He is a One Man Band

[jagilki]

apparently not don on TV, nor on the network, the Announcers also got drafted.

http://www.wwe.com/article/new-wwe-announce-teams-revealed

It's a New Era for the entire landscape of WWE, which continues to change and evolve with the WWE Brand Extension Draft. That includes the announce teams for WWE programming. The teams for Raw, SmackDown, "WWE Superstars" and WWE Main Event are all experiencing a major shakeup, including one major voice changing shows and several rising commentators being inserted into the lineup.

The new announce teams for WWE's New Era will feature Michael Cole, Corey Graves and Byron Saxton Monday nights on Raw, while Mauro Ranallo, JBL and David Otunga handle the commentary for SmackDown Live every Tuesday night.

Also receiving a makeover will be the announce teams for WWE Superstars and WWE Main Event. Both shows will be led by Tom Phillips, and he will be joined each and every week by Graves on WWE Superstars and Otunga on WWE Main Event.

[Cory]

People I/Most people care about on each roster:

Raw: 15
Smackdown: 6ish


Summary:

1) How Bayley didn't get drafted must be heartbreaking for her. So much talk of he wanting to come up, being a huge part of the divas revolution AND not really in a feud for the NXT Women's title and FAR greener people in Nia Jax and Alexa Bliss Carmella getting pick, da fuq? I think Bliss has the best ass in his history of WWE but Bayley actually can wrestle 4* women's matches. She HAS to be the surprised partner at Battleground right?

2) Smackdown is CLEARLY the B show. Literally no mid card....which is good. I can simply check Styles's match and skip the rest. American Alpha has no one to feud with outside the Usos.....wtf. With Shane and Bryan representing the New Era...all the indy darlings went to Raw....must be missing something. I thought Smackdown was about the wrestling....gets mostly entertainers. I knew this was gonna go down piss poorly when they announced the Cruiserweights were going to be on Raw.

Dave Meltzer said only the top guys knew where they were going and the rest was a surprise. This is bad for wrestling fans, this was a 50/50 split of the roster rather than offering "unique brands" like we were sold on. All of the guys that deserve more time for matches like Cesaro, Owens, Zayn, Neville, Balor now are gonna be crammed in another weekly card loaded with the same old stale title pictures, much more emphasis on promos and commercial breaks and not enough time to establish storylines....= same fucking multi-man matches every fucking week. Cesaro dropped a mini-pipe bomb too....

EDIT: Check it here:  https://twitter.com/DeathToAllMarks/status/755590615581065216

Like who the fuck is Smackdowns mid-card? Orton/Wyatt/Del Rio/Ziggler? I'd like to thank WWE for sure as hell calming the claims that we'd get wrestling overload and too much WWE with 5 hours a week because Smackdown just drafted like they were Al Davis and the Oakland Raiders....but even Al Davis would have drafted all the fast flippy guys we all wanted and expected. Hell even the announcers on Raw are one sided.

All the indy darlings are gonna get stuck in mid-card cause its going to be the Reigns show once he gets back. We could have had a perfect balance, fantasy booking with kinda the direction they showed tonight during the draft:

Raw: [Main Title A] Rollins v. Reigns, Owens vs Balor, [Tag Team Titles Feud] New Day/Wyatts, [Womens Title Feud] Charlotte vs Banks, Lesnar in/out, [Main US Title Feud] Rusev vs. Orton/Jericho, [Main Cruiserweight Feud] Neville vs Kalisto,

Smackdown: [Main Title B] Styles vs Cena, [IC Title Feud] Zayn vs Miz, AA or Enzo/Cass vs Gallows/Anderson, Austin Aries vs Cesaro, Becky vs Bayley, Del Rio vs Ziggler, Undertaker In/out (Since Cena needs to be his final opponent)

And the tease of former superstars returning was LOL, no mention of the best wrestler in the Wyatts in Luke Harper.

---

All in all;

#1 Pro: No Wrestling Overload for this guy, I can watch Raw when I can and just read the sheets and see if anything on Smackdown was worth checking out.

#1 Con: The stales feuds didn't get dispersed. Having Owens, Zayn, Cesaro with their ceiling STILL being upper mid card is very disappointing....at least on Smackdown we'd have a chance of ONE (Owens most likely) getting a sniff of the World Title Picture. This draft preserved all of the old feuds....what new feuds can we get excited about? Ambrose and....Orton? Nope. No Balor vs AJ outside of super cards, Tag Titles will stay the same as well.

[T-Bonizzle]

The SD Battle Royale is a sad affair right now....

[Jon]

SO...

A Women's Universal Title??

[jagilki]

Show's not over yet, but this week at least, Raw's got it.

SD's adding some peeps, but this whole "Raw gets more people for being three hours" fucked SD.

[Cory]

Way to capitalize on the popularity of Ziggler......2 years too late.

Again, for how weak that roster is you kinda need Cena and Styles OUT of the title picture because they'll have stand alone feuds that can help the brand...I mean Styles/Ambrose is certainly ideal for the IWC, but Ziggler? Looking at that match Bray Wyatt had to be the choice.

Wyatt and Cena already did their thing, Styles will probably still feud with Cena, Orton is with Brock...so Bray is with?

Jag ushers what I said in the Raw thread, ideally you'd want 2, but if just ONE of Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn or Cesaro were on Smackdown how much better they'd be off. I'll say Kevin Owens was the guy since he's a heel.

What you have is (probably):

Raw: Rollins (Heel) vs Balor (Face), Reigns (Face) vs Owens (Heel)?, Zayn (Face) vs Neville (heel turn?) for Cruiserweight, Rusev (Heel) vs Cesaro (face), New Day (Face) vs The Club (Heel), Enzo & Cass (Face) vs Shining Stars (Heel), Sasha (Face) vs Charlotte (Heel).

Smackdown: Ambrose (Face) vs Ziggler (Face), Styles (Heel) vs Orton (Face), Cena (Face) vs Del Rio (Heel)?, Wyatt (Heel) vs Crews (Face), American Alpha (Face) vs The Usos (Face).

I think if you 'traded' maybe Orton, Del Rio and The Usos for Owens, Cesaro and Enzo and Cass there would be a perfect balance between established faces and heels and workers and entertainers.

What you COULD have would be:

Raw: Rollins (Face) vs Balor (Heel), Reigns (Face) vs Orton (Heel), Zayn (Face) vs Rusev (Heel), The New Day (Face) vs Balor Club (Heel), Sasha (Face) vs Charlotte (Heel), Neville (Tweener) leads the Cruiserweight Division

Smackdown: Ambrose (Face) vs Owens (Heel), Cesaro (Face) vs Styles (Heel), Cena (Face) vs Corbin (Heel), AA (Face) vs Enzo & Cass (Tweeners), Wyatt (Tweener) vs The Miz (Heel), Crews (Face) vs Ziggler (Heel).

...and then Smackdown gets priority on NXT guys like Joe, Nakamura, Aries. Raw still has more titles and power to fill the extra hour but Smackdown, the brand billed and sold to us as the home of 'New Era' would have the indy guys we all expected it to have.

[Black Death]

well I say give them some time ... maybe a month to build some storylines , etc   nothing going to happen right over night.  goes for both RAW and SD

[jagilki]

I'm just waiting for next week when Eric Escobar returns and hits whatever his move is on Heath Slater.

[Cory]

oh completely, I totally enjoyed Raw and SD was kinda meh, but there's certainly time...be it a trade or old guys coming back. With Shelton Benjamin returning to SD maybe Hass comes back and they feud with AA

[Fnord]

I just can't see them filling a PPV on their own.

[Gravedigger]

Solid show. Ziggler's an odd choice at this point, but I see where trying to re-build him to a high level makes sense. What hurts SD is coming one day after Raw, which was tremendous.

Good to see Shelton is coming back. He'll be a good midcard/fringe main event guy.

[T-Bonizzle]

It was fine that RAW ended up with the bigger roster, but they ended up giving RAW too much and SD not enough. The Battle Royale for the 6th spot was pathetic. There were only 10 guys in it and 6 were in tag teams....we were left wondering if Kane or Apollo were going to get the nod because no one else was legit enough on their own except Miz who has a title already.

Obviously they can't create momentum for people over night. But we are going to collectively cringe next week when Erik Rowan attacks Apollo Crews to start a feud with no ramifications. Both guys are good workers, but they have absolutely no heat behind them. The brand split of course is supposed to alleviate that problem by giving those tiers of workers more time. They put all the mid-carders with heat on RAW. There are going to be growing pains on SD, and I worry that WWE won't give it enough time to get through this. Remember SD gets the first exclusive PPV after Summerslam too! They have less time than RAW to establish their show and also less workers to work with.