John Pollock andWai Tingreview WWE Raw featuring a Fatal Five-Way to become #1 contender. Monday’s episode featured a fatal five-way match involving Shinsuke Nakamura, AJ Styles, Ricochet, Rey Mysterio, and Robert Roode to determine who faces Seth Rollins for the Universal title next week, several announcements for next week’s Season Premiere of Raw, EC3 makes it onto the show, a rematch between Baron Corbin and Chad Gable, and the main event between Seth Rollins and Braun Strowman. Plus, John & Wai reveal the new fall schedule at POST Wrestling that goes into effect next week.
On Rewind A Smackdown respect your decision on your approach but I think that also speaks to the risk WWE is taking by having the show on Friday Nights. The Observer guys have been saying Smackdown will be the A show. The great Twitter account Wrestlevotes says it’ll be the A show even throwing out there that Vic Joseph might end up calling Raw with Cole moving to Friday. With all that said it’s still Friday night and if you had a long work or school week and sat through a week of 7 hours of wrestling Friday Smackdown will get lost in the shuffle with the attitude “I’ll just watch it Saturday afternoon”
On Lacey Evans, it turns out the people who rush to call others snowflakes were the actual snowflakes
On Kenny isn’t it obvious he was doing what Seth did running down NXT. Also because you guys didn’t grow up watching the Simpsons it went over your head that Kenny was paying homage to Krusty The Clown when he thought the camera was off and said "That outta hold those S.O.Bs
On WWE’s (lack of) promotion for NXT on Raw and Smackdown…frankly, I think there are fears that it may grow to overtake the ratings of their 1A & 1B shows. Let’s look at what led to NXT being brought to USA in the first place. A growing popularity and the formation of AEW which was going to be a direct competitor on a visable network in Turner. So they elevate NXT. What was scare to WWE about AEW holds true with NXT, that the audience that watches wrestling would rather invest in that type of product and therefore leave watching the other main roster brands. Sure, I think they want NXT to succeed, but imagine it is doing 2-2.5million viewers, just short of what Smackdown was doing, and it only cost a fraction of what the rights deals were for their more pushed shows.
I don’t mean to say they want to hold it back, but I could very well seeing them making a conscious decision to not promote the product, especially as they reboot RAW and SD which just got over $200mil a year. The message to their TV partners would be, hey thanks for the money, but now we are telling our audience we have this new show that is even better. Instead they’ll let those who are looking for it find it on their own. It’s just a perception thing.
I have a feeling USA losing Smackdown was also a reason for NXT moving up as I’m sure they wanted to replace that highly rated program. I think the time slot might have more to do with AEW than the move does.
