Smackdown isn't a rival organisation though, its part of WWE too. Why WWE should treat Smackdown as a rival to Raw when as you say it could assist it is baffling.

Smackdown did become devalued, because WWE allowed it to. As they do now they didn't put any effort into Smackdown and as a result it got lost in the shuffle.

Raw shouldn't be three hours. WWE never has enough content to sufficiently fill a three hour Raw. HHH even admitted on the Stone Cold Podcast that Raw would benefit from being two hours.

Ultimately Smackdown as a Raw extra would be better than current Smackdown. A brand split would just force WWE to put more effort in with an exclusive roster.

This episode of Raw is the first time ever Raw has been held on February 29th apparently. Next is in 2044

Welcome to the thread.

And Tyler Breeze by far is so underused and wasted, its ridiculous.

Hey. Welcome to the thread.

I certainly think Sandow could've gone places - don't think he was ever going to be the main-eventer or anything (his in ring stuff wasn't incredible) but has given his all in any role he's been given and is charismatic so certainly deserves to be on TV over some others.

Alicia Fox is similar - I don't think she was ever going to be the leader of the divas but she's got a load of upside. Underrated in ring (her Northern Lights Suplex is one of the best moves in WWE) and her period as a 'fierce' heel was very entertaining. Plus she does a lot of PR work and is a loyal company member.
Certainly some 'better' divas could learn from her.

Also while all of them are on Raw fairly regularly I do fear Cody, Dolph and Barrett will all end up with 'what if' careers. Which is a shame as all three have shown talent and huge upside over their time in WWE but never fully got pushed to the moon.

Haha. Yeah. You always had the same guys moving back and forth.

And there's another benefit of the brand split. If someone (aka Tyler Breeze) was being wasted on one show, he could be drafted and maybe progress on the other show.

Ahhh thinking Raw will still be around in 2044. How optimistic of you lol.


It had to be done.

The one that always irrationally winds me up was the change of February PPV name from No Way Out to 'Elimination Chamber'. I mean the old name even fitted the PPV theme.

Who would the fans prefer for Lesnar to face at Wrestlemania?

I felt a bit under whelmed at Dean Ambrose wrestling him given its Wrestlemania, alough if its a No Holds Barred Streetfight I guess Ambrose could enlist the Wyatt's help to beat Lesnar at the big show.

For me there is one guy id love to see face Lesnar and it be Scott Steiner, just as big as Lesnar and bigger arms. I remember loving the build up they did in 2003 for Steiner & Triple H. Yes the match itself was pants but the buildup leading into it was really good, and seeing the buildup between Lesnar & Steiner would be epic.

The problem with the Authority comes when HHH and Steph stop being proper heels and as you say when they belittle members of the Authority it does no one any good.

Only time I'd support it would be if it were to turn the person they're belittling face - who eventually just tells them to do one. Otherwise it's counter productive.

A shame as both HHH and Steph clearly can be really effective heels without doing it.
The last months before Rollins got injured were incredibly odd with the Authority dynamic.

An old script from 2005 has reemerged. Fascinating reading this one as I vaguely remember this Raw.
http://imgur.com/a/cWdVR

Having seen a few of these I usually dismiss the 'title' of the broadcast but the irony of this one was not wasted

Don't know if this has been posted yet, but the next Hall of Fame inductee has been announced.

In spoilers in case some people don't want to know.



Well deserved.

I miss when HOF Inductees were announced during Raw rather than by a website. I used to get really excited, now it's just meh.

Something that just struck me. Do people find it how much younger Undertaker looks out of character. Just seen pictures of him with a fan outside Raw tonight and, to me, he looks noticeably younger than he will do in a few hours.

I see you point. By the time its announced on Raw everyone probably knows anyway.

Why did WWE decide to change it anyway?

I still get excited for the HOF. It's a great event to have.

It's just some of the fans that decide to be rather vociferous that become annoying

I don't know, probably that it got some mainstream attention from the likes of TMZ. I remember sitting here saying that Lita definitely wouldn't be inducted in the year she was and then marking out like a mother when 20 seconds later her music hit.

The only problem i had with fans at HOF was when Jake Roberts was delivering such a lovely, heartfelt speech and some utter ***** tried to get a Punk chant going.

Kurt Angle coming back and teaming with Shane would be epic.

Lucky to still be around in 2020 TBH.

Yeah. Wrestlemania in general now is so big that sites are going to want to announce inductees. WWE also wants the mainstream press so are never going to reject it.

That's the thing. Jake Roberts has had an incredible career and story and deserves his one moment to say what he feels about his career and what he's been through without fans being disrespectful.

Chris Jericho was so angered by last year's Hall of Fame behaviour by some fans he let rip on one of his podcasts.

You'd never get that sort of thing at any other hall of fame. At the NFL and others you get fans of rival teams sat in an audience all giving the deserved respect to the inductees.

Eyeliner isn't a good look for old men.

I know it was a work and therefore fair game but I found last week really disrespectful. When Steph came out, understandably the fans were gonna chant their asses off, but the part where Vince was talking about his dad and his legacy, I just found it really sad to chant WHAT over it.

I think it's one of those things, lots probably disagree, just let it be a night of respect. It's different sitting here typing it but when you're there I think you should clap at the appropriate times, laugh when you should and then zip it. I think people going there need to understand it's not a show in the way going to Raw is.

Well yeah. I don't know, his whole face just looks more old and saggy when he's on screen. Or he has fantastic photoshop abilities

I agree. Vincent J McMahon was a pioneer in wrestling. It's fair to say that without him and his dad Jess McMahon, and of course Vince Jr, there would be no WWWF, WWF, WWE.

I liked what Shane said about generations and the respect he had for his ancestors and that he wants WWE to run into the fifth and sixth generations. They may have been just words on a script but it had some real meaning to it as well. I believe Shane was talking from the heart there.

I just can't believe any genuine fan of wrestling would go to a Hall of Fame ceremony and not show the proper respect to athletes who have suffered so much to entertain them.

I think they all care about the generational aspect of it, I'm sure Vince wants it to run for decades and for it to remain, at least in some way, under the McMahon's control.

Even if they haemorrhage another 1 million viewers, it would still remain NBCUniversal's biggest asset on pay wall television. When taking into account giving them a 3 hour block for 52 weeks.

EDIT: Though I feel it would benefit them, rather than WWE financially, if they kept Raw as 2 hours (8-10) and used it as a lead in to the 10pm slot (some kind of original programming). Heck it would possibly be more lucrative to turn Smackdown into Thursday Night Raw. The SD brand is completely stagnant, whereas the Raw brand still has lots of life left in it.

I'm sure they all do.

In a weird way that promo was like WWE acknowledging that things aren't going as great as they once were, and that hard work is required to ensure WWE has a bright future.

On the plus side Vince Russo did Steve Austin's podcast today and in return Steve did a recording (Attitude Era Raw commentary i think) for Russo's site.

Wrestling's a weird thing now. As far as the actual wrestling goes, it's not changed, it's went backwards, there is no psychology in wrestling anymore. If you put a 1970s WWF tape on and then put a Raw wrestling match on it's frightening to see how similar they are.

And like I said about Vince's F bomb, that's 3 more shows this week that had F bombs, one of which was on the USA Network called Colony, one of my favourite shows at the moment. Granted they were bleeped but it just shows how far TV has come and I mentioned a few weeks ago about Shades Of Blue with Jennifer Lopez showing a man going down on another guy, something which not that long ago would never have been shown on US TV.



I think wrestling will always be on TV in some way or another but both TNA and Lucha saw huge drops in their viewership last week and Lucha is actually good. It could be over saturation but I think it's a case of wrestling is just one of those things that you can only do so much with and some of the TV shows you get these days, the actors are top notch, the writing is so good, the stories are so good, wrestling can't compete with it infact there is no way wrestling will ever see a boom period again. And since WWE and TNA have basically taken away all storytelling and all acting and characters and stripped away everything that made wrestling what it was, many people would rather just watch MMA, why watch a playfight when you can watch a real fight? That's all there is to WWE and TNA now. Just the wrestling matches where as before, for a long long time, it was the over the top characters and stories that drew interest.

I'll tell you one thing that should bring up a red flag for WWE. Last Monday between the first hour and the third hour they lost 900,000 viewers. Just under a million viewers. left the show. The same thing with TNA and Lucha, the numbers go down more than they go up. I don't know of any other TV show in the world where the show stays on air despite people LEAVING the show throughout it. If AMC had their minute by minutes and seen people switching the channel after 35 minutes of The Walking Dead would questions not be asked? I think so. I don't know of any show where EVERY SINGLE WEEK, there are more viewers watching at the start than there are at the end and the show stays on the air. Would never happen with any other show.


TV has surpassed the wrestling business so much. At least 15 years too much. I used to hold out hope for wrestling but not anymore. With what TV shows are doing in America now on basic cable, not even Showtime or HBO, just plain basic cable, and those shows are on different nights but the same timeslot as Raw, there's no competition, WWE might very well be the ONLY PG family entertainment show on in that time slot across the board. TV at that time is for adults and these shows are every week going far and far and far beyond the call of duty. Wrestling can't compete.

So i agree with you on the year 2020. At least by the next contract negotiations WWE has which should be around that time, there's no doubt in my mind Smackdown will be dropped altogether and there's no way WWE will go back to a 3.0 every week, they lost 800k viewers within 8 months last year after Wrestlemania and they've never gotten them back except from when Rock returned and Vince McMahon returned. Those people have left again and Vince can talk all he wants about ratings not mattering anymore and it's all about social media and getting the content when you want it, WWE might make a ton on Youtube views, USA Network doesn't see a penny of that, WWE might like to flaunt their Twitter followers.....that doesn't make USA Network money so while ratings might not matter to him, ratings are the only thing driving the USA Network and they will care about them because if they didn't matter then why do we have them? Why do they exist if they don't matter? And when the WWE downsizes on basic cable, that right there could be the excuse other networks use to basically can TNA and Lucha.

I will say this though, whatever happens, it's had a good run. I've had a good 30 year run at it, it's entertained me for 30 years. That happens in TV. Things come to and end. They have a run. A time limit. A start date and an end date. I say this as someone who as little as 4 months ago would have said the opposite, I don't think there is anything left to do in wrestling. Everything that could be done has been done. Maybe I'm wrong but I just think society has moved on so much and kids these days are so smart and so far ahead of where my generation was when I was a kid, wrestling isn't something they are gonna buy into like we did. They're into Iphones and computers and now this virtual reality thing and then sports and then with the TV shows that are on now. I hope wrestling survives it.