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Posts Tagged ‘Smackdown’

In the post-Thanksgiving atmosphere, following Survivor Series but before the TLC PPV, WWE has announced the air date of their next live WWE Smackdown Supershow; the SyFy episode will hit airwaves on Tuesday, November 29.

The show will be broadcast from Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, North Carolina and looks to be a blockbuster. The current card advertised locally suggests a six-man tag match with announcer Booker T as the special guest referee.

Smackdown shows have been heating up lately. A few months ago, tickets were moving so slow, offering premiums with lower-level tickets, like Ford Expedition custom floor mats, was not out of the question. Now, business has picked up, as good ol’ JR would say.

You need to buy network cable if you don’t have it already, to be sure you don’t miss a huge WWE event on SyFy.

On Tuesday, August 30, Smackdown will air live on SyFy instead of airing pre-taped in Friday. (The Tuesday episode, entitled “SuperSmackdown” will re-air on Friday in its usual slot.)

The event is being heavily promoted by WWE and SyFy, and it could be that it is a water-testing moment for the companies to see if Smackdown would draw better ratings if aired live on Tuesdays instead of pre-taped on Fridays. Either way, it means back-to-back nights of WWE action at the end of the month.

Keep your eyes peeled and your DVRs set!

The lineup for the Smackdown brand’s Money In the Bank ladder match involved the following eight superstars: Sheamus, Wade Barrett, Daniel Bryan, Sin Cara, Cody Rhodes, Justin Gabriel, Heath Slater, and Kane. Each participant got their shot without having to be issued special William Arthur Invitations (though that might have been nice).

Here’s my breakdown on this lineup. Sheamus is a dark-horse favorite but is part of the main event scene with or without the suitcase. Wade Barrett could use the win for fueling a mini-relaunch of his career after losing a lot of momentum when he moved over to the Smackdown roster. Sin Cara is too new to get the win, while Kane would make for a boring repeat winner, and neighter Justin Gabriel nor Heath Slater would prove credible.

That leaves two people who could be “refreshing” winners. Cody Rhodes has been gaining heat as a mid-level heel on Smackdown and a briefcase win could launch him into the upper tier as a challenger to Randy Orton. And Daniel Bryan would certainly have the skill set to sell the win, though his momentum right now is near zero, and he’d need to hold onto the suitcase until an Orton heel-turn or until someone more heelish holds the title.

In the end, WWE’s most likely bet for this match would seem to be Rhodes.

For my money, the best roster move coming out of the recent WWE Draft is the move that shifted Chris Jericho from Raw to SmackDown. While some folks could see this as a demotion for Jericho, the truth is that Jericho has very nearly been the WWE’s most valuable player over the past year, providing the most “match of the year” candidate matches of anyone on a WWE roster, except perhaps for Shawn Michaels, his feud partner throughout most of 2008.

Truth is, Smackdown has been a worst of WWE’s three weekly broadcasts for some time now, but with Jericho now on Smackdown, that has the potential to change; he immediately becomes the most important member of the SmackDown roster and could easily carry the top title with honor, though to be honest, he doesn’t need it to enhance his drawing power.

While commercials hawking Fenphedra have often been more entertaining on Friday night than Smackdown’s main event matches, that now has a chance to change.

Recent episodes of Friday Night Smackdown bear out the notion that although it is the number two show in WWE’s stable, it is the better destination for fans of in-ring action. While Smackdown features a less-star-studded lineup than Monday Night Raw, the average two-hours-and-overrun broadcast of Raw features 30-35 minutes of in-ring wrestling action.

By comparison, recent episodes of Smackdown have featured about 45 minutes of in-ring action. According to Jim Ross, play-by-play man on Smackdown, this is a result of a cost-saving measure on Smackdown during the run-up to WrestleMania; the company is doing one taping every two weeks on Smackdown, with enough wrestling to fill two weeks of shows. Raw, meanwhile, is still broadcast live most weeks out of the year.

Even laptop memory is not sturdy enough to remember the last time Raw or Smackdown featured this much wrestling and so little “entertainment,” but old school wrestling fans are sure to be in for a treat if they tune in.

On October 3, WWE Friday Night Smackdown will be moving from The CW to MyNetwork, and WWE is hoping they won’t need the help of moving services to get the message out to their fans.

Of course, only the biggest markets in the nation have MyNetwork affiliates in their area, though satellite subscribers usually won’t have to worry about that hurdle. The important thing to keep in mind is that there will be a channel change for Smackdown fans a week from Friday.

SmackDown’s Mr. Kennedy was injured recently and could be out of action anywhere from six weeks to six months, according to his own official Web site. The should injury involves a torn labrum.

With this sort of injury, six weeks of evaluation and physical therapy could correct the problem; if that doesn’t work, Kennedy will undergo surgery to repair the labrum and the recovery time from that is four to six months following the procedure.

While it may require some rather delicate surgical equipment rather than a bunch of air tools, the one thing Kennedy remains sure of is his desire to return to the ring as soon as he’s healed up.

I’m a fan of the McMahon family and their involvement in the TV storylines, but I must admit that their extended absence has been a good thing for RAW and SmackDown.

Sometimes, too much of them on TV is simply too much and their prescence becomes about as welcome as commercial collection agencies at a Debtors Anonymous meeting.

That’s why I hope they don’t rush Vince back to his on-camera roll. The shows are more fun and less predictable now, and I’d like to see WWE run with this concept for a while longer.

Who knows? Maybe when they finally bring Vince back, they’ll even find a way to make his character fresh and unpredictable.

It was like looking at the first version of WWE SmackDown on PS2 instead of PS3; it’s been that long since Triple H has been on the SmackDown roster and on Friday when he made his appearance on the show, it became obvious immediately why WWE chose to move Triple H over to the Friday show.

Simply put: it’s a move to save SmackDown as an entity, as it moves from CW to MyNetworkTV at the end of the summer. SmackDown has become a morose show over the past couple years, becoming a breeding ground for two potential breakout stars in MVP and Mr. Kennedy, but all too often filled with second- and third-tier talent.

That’s where this Triple H move comes in; he immediately adds watchable talent to the SmackDown broadcast and helps lead the rebalancing of the brands. Seeing Triple H opposite MVP, even if it was just for an in-ring interview, was something no one’s seen yet; certainly that has to appeal to Triple H, now the mentor of the entire SmackDown roster, far more than staying on Raw another year and reworking the same old feuds again and again and again.

People washing their hands in a glass sink shouldn’t throw… stones? Whatever; the point is that there are some big changes on the way for ECW that could conceivably improve that show’s standing in the ratings.

Traditionally, ECW tapings have been the “warm-up act” for Smackdown shows, ever since the WWE brought ECW back a couple years ago. However, the company recently unveiled a plan to move ECW tapings from Tuesday nights with the Smackdown brand to Monday nights with the Raw brand.

There are some natural fallouts of this strategy, of course. First, it means curtains for WWE Heat. Second, it means more cameos on ECW tapings by Raw-branded WWE superstars, and fewer by Smackdown-branded superstars.

This is a huge hit against the Smackdown brand; not only is it moving from The CW this fall to MyNetworkTV, a huge step down, but it is losing the extra draw the ECW brand brought to its tapings. While details like two ECW superstars currently holding the Smackdown-branded WWE tag team titles are sure to be worked out before the switch is made, one can only hope that the switch will also means Raw and ECW won’t brand-blend to the extent that Smackdown and ECW did.

For me, that diluted both brands. I’d hate to see RAW dragged down that path. No start-date has been announced just yet.

Mrs. Foley’s baby boy is back in the WWE; this time, he’s not promoting a book or taking chairshots to put some young superstar over. Instead, Mick is the new SmackDown color commentator, filling in a role that has been in turmoil since JBL un-retired and returned to the wrestling ring as an in-ring competitor.

You don’t have to worry about going through laptop rental to get a glimpse of Foley anymore, as he is on-air two hours a week on the WWE Smackdown broadcast. Foley’s role as SmackDown commentator is an unexpected turn; the company has tried out Mike Adamle, among others, in that role, all to mixed reviews.

But Foley is legit on color commentary, and brings with him a fan base that may boost SmackDown’s ratings a notch. He has remained on Raw’s roster of “retired superstars” for the past several years and whenever he’s done a one-week cameo, it has been on that broadcast that he has appeared.

Although I’d hoped Foley would return as an announcer one day, I always kind of expected it would be on Raw; his presence on SmackDown immediately makes that broadcast, despite its under-talented roster, more intriguing.

Could the biggest heel wrestler of the last year or more, Umaga, be moving off WWE Raw to the SmackDown brand? That’s the word on the street; the move is expected to take place sometime within the next month or two, now that WrestleMania is over.

This is a time of year when WWE typically likes to shuffle the deck and freshen up all its brands. With SmackDown apparently set to move from The CW to MyNetworkTV in the fall, a changeup to make the SmackDown brand stronger is long past due.

The makeover started at WrestleMania, with Undertaker winning the World Heavyweight title from Edge. With a new champion, new opponents will be needed and the Umaga character, a primitive, force-of-nature style of heel, would make an ideal foe if ‘Taker’s run is to be an extended one.

Although often portrayed as a beastial, monstrous heel, Umaga has lost most of his meaningful matches in the past year for storyline purposes and has become overused and less of a threat on RAW; by moving the Branson golf-loving heel to SmackDown, the company has a chance to rebuild Umaga’s character from the ground up.

Time will tell if this rumor is accurate, but Umaga’s WrestleMania match against SmackDown’s Batista for brand supremacy, which Umaga lost, would seem to set the stage for a brand-switch move.