Well, it’s finally happening, it seems. SmackDown is moving to Tuesday nights in July, going live, and is seemingly going to be given increased attention as the USA Network sets up live wrestling every Monday and Tuesday night.
Earlier this year, I wrote a piece on the idea of reviving the brand split, back it looked like the Shane McMahon/Undertaker match at WrestleMania was going to set up a brand split, rather than the forced-teamwork of Shane and Stephanie that it ended up giving us.
Now, the announcement of SmackDown going live from July 19 – just days before WWE’s Battleground pay-per-view – has reignited talk of the brand split going live. Logistically, it probably isn’t such a great idea to do this days ahead of any pay-per-view, but given the title of that show, it wouldn’t surprise me to see that the blow-off of the Shane-and-Stephanie storyline would be on that event… with a screwy finish perhaps to kick-off the brand split.
Should this mean that WWE goes the whole hog and split the company in two? With NFL-like drafts to distribute talent across the two brands? Sure… why not? Mistakes were made in the first draft, but there were also (brief) successes, particularly the period time when Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Chavo Guerrero, Edge and Rey Mysterio were the focal point of SmackDown.
The key to a successful brand split is that it produces two shows that are distinct. If SmackDown remains an extension of Raw, but with a different cast, then it’s doomed to failure. If, however, SmackDown is allowed to be a different show, perhaps focusing on the in-ring talent, rather than storylines, then it has a chance to succeed.
After all, NXT became a critical success by being completely different from the main show. However, SmackDown also has a new hurdle to overcome that it didn’t have in 2002: it’ll be live, and the safety net will be removed. No more will botched spots be edited out. No more will mis-spoken lines be voiced-over, which increases the risk for any new call-up from NXT, who may have been given a “soft launch” on SmackDown, rather than on Raw for that reason.
There’ll be much more written about live SmackDown (and yes, it’ll go live in Canada and the UK as well), but until there’s even a hint of a confirmed direction, it’d be wise to hold back on the speculation… and that includes the expected “whatever will happen to TNA?”, as they are now faced with the choice of going up against live SmackDown every week, or changing timeslots for the seventh time in three years!