wrestling / Columns

The Draft: A New Era Begins

July 29, 2016 | Posted by RSarnecky

It’s a new era for the WWE, or at least that’s what their marketing campaign would like you to believe. However, for one week at least, it really did feel like a new era in the WWE. It wasn’t just a new stage, different positioning of the announcers, or a new theme song that showed the fans that this isn’t the same old WWE.

MONDAY NIGHT RAW


Monday Night RAW opened like so many RAW telecasts before this one. Stephanie McMahon and the General Manager, at this point in time, Mick Foley, addressed the crowd. What made this different from past Stephanie McMahon promos is that she gave us a clear direction of what would be on the show. Stephanie and Mick announced the two Fatal Four Way matches, and the winner of each match would main event against each other later in the show for a shot at the new WWE Universal championship against #1 Draft Pick Seth Rollins at SummerSlam. Next, they announced that Charlotte would be defending her WWE Women’s championship on RAW against Sasha Banks, since Banks pinned her in the tag team match the night before at Battleground. Two very logical scenarios created by the WWE in the opening segment. The most surprising aspect about the segment is that this was the only time that you saw Stephanie McMahon on the broadcast. Wasn’t RAW supposed to be the show where the authority figures took center stage, and the wrestlers were the supporting cast? This isn’t a complaint. On the contrary, it was a welcome surprise, and really helped the flow of the show. In regards to the authority figures on WWE TV, less is more.

THE MAIN MATCHES


The Fatal Four Ways, the Women’s championship, and the main event matches all delivered in the ring. The first Fatal Four Way featured Finn Balor, Rusev, Kevin Owens, and Cesaro. Since it was expected that Roman Reigns would win the second Fatal Four Way match, the favorites of the first match looked to be Finn Balor or Kevin Owens. Kevin Owens is one of the most over heels in the company. If the WWE wanted to try to fool themselves into thinking the fans would cheer for Roman against a heel, then Kevin Owens should have advanced. Would Owens have gotten booed by the fans versus Reigns? Absolutely not. However, he’s a bigger main event star than the other heel in the match, Rusev. On the other hand, if the WWE really wanted to make a new main event star, which they need to do since the brand split weakens each show’s depth, then Finn Balor was the choice to advance in the match. Having Finn Balor win the match was the right call.

The second Fatal Four Way featured Roman Reigns, Chris Jericho, Sami Zayn, and Sheamus. Like the previous Fatal Four Way match, this contest was also very good. Roman Reigns played the subtle heel role in the match, which added to his character. At Battleground, it was very noticeable that the negative response Roman Reigns is getting in the ring is now getting in the way of the matches. Even though Roman Reigns matches are good, there is a dynamic of the match that is missing when the babyface comeback is met with a chorus of boos. It takes away from the enjoyment of the match.

When Roman fought Finn Balor in the main event, he played the subtle heel role perfectly. His use of power moves and tossing Balor around like a rag doll was very effective in making Reigns come across like a bad ass killing machine. This is the way he should have been booked all along. His destruction in the ring helped get Finn Balor over even more. Balor survived the onslaught, and was about to take Roman’s best shots while delivering punishment of his own. Even though it made for a better story to give Balor the victory, it was still surprising that the WWE didn’t go with Roman Reigns, as Reigns vs. Rollins was their original SummerSlam plans. This is much better. Finn Balor became an instant star. The fans get a Finn Balor vs. Seth Rollins dream match on the WWE’s second biggest show of the year. There is now intrigue as to what direction the WWE is going to take with Roman Reigns. Is he still looked at as the new face of the company, and is just in the doghouse house for a few months, or is the Reigns as THE GUY over as an experiment?

The other big match on the show was the long anticipated singles match between Sasha Banks and Charlotte. It was surprising that they didn’t save this contest for SummerSlam. With no build up, their match wasn’t going to pop a rating on RAW. However, by having Sasha Banks win the Women’s Championship, it gave the show an “anything can happen” on RAW vibe. This may help future shows, as if the WWE continues to give surprise moments like these on RAW, the Monday Night show will turn into can’t miss TV. It’s sort of like the same strategy that early Nitros had for WCW. Their match didn’t disappoint. The only negative, even though it’s understandable why they did it, is that Sasha Banks won the Women’s title on the show. The first championship reign of a wrestler should be won on a big show, like WrestleMania or SummerSlam. It should be on a show that the fans will remember years from now. Instead, it happened on a random TV show. The logic behind it is understandable. However, it would seem bigger on the biggest stage.

SQUASH MATCHES

This episode of RAW brought us the return of the squash matches. Not since the early Monday Night Wars era has the WWE given us this many enhancement matches on a Monday Night RAW telecast. It was glorious. Each squash match made the winner look tremendous in victory. Both Nia Jax, the Caucasian version of Awesome Kong, and Braun Strowman left RAW looking like unstoppable monsters. These matches helped to establish both performers as forces to be reckoned with in the future. Neville and the team of Enzo Amore and Big Cass fought in semi-squash matches against name WWE talent in Curtis Axel and the team of Primo and Epico Colon. These two matches established that Curtis Axel and the Colons will maintain their status as being lower card acts. At the same time, it showed that Neville is on the rise, and Enzo/Cass will continue on their way to being one of the WWE’s top acts.

THE BAD OF RAW

The only negative of the show for the most part was the name of the new WWE RAW championship. Instead of naming it the World Heavyweight Championship, since they took the “World” moniker off of the WWE title held by Dean Ambrose, they decided to go in a new direction and name it the WWE Universal Championship. That name sounds too much like a regional title that you would see in the territory days of the 1960s-1980s. Hello, Bill Watts’ Universal Wrestling Federation. The name just doesn’t sound like a “world championship” title. However, like most things, after time, the fans will get used to the name, and it will no longer seem awkward.

THE DIFFERENCES


While the stage set-up and new opening of RAW didn’t blow anyone away as being a key component to showing that this is now a new era, there were a few other things that the WWE did which also made the show feel different. The announcer set up gave the show more of a WWF Superstars/Wrestling Challenge look to the broadcast. Whether intentional or not, it was a nice nod to those syndicated shows of days gone by. The other new feature included in-ring interviews before and after some of the matches. The interview with the jobber who battled Braun Strowman was really funny, and helped put over the fact that Strowman is feared by other wrestlers. The post-match interviews with Sasha Banks and Roman Reigns were fantastic. It really provided the WWE with a realistic UFC feel to it. The WWE needs to do more of this on their shows. It made Sasha’s victory, and Roman’s loss seem even more important than it being “just another match.”

SMACKDOWN!


SmackDown started the same, yet different then RAW. Both shows had segments where the Brand Commissioner and the General Manager announced that new number one contenders would be crowned for their top championship. RAW had the wrestlers on the stage, and the authority figures in the ring. SmackDown used the reverse strategy. Where RAW announced two Fatal Four Way matches, Shane McMahon and Daniel Bryan announced a Six Pack Challenge. The SmackDown duo also announced the sixth man in the number one contender’s match would be the winner of a battle royal that featured most of the remaining SmackDown roster.

THE MAIN MATCHES


It’s hard to fairly compare the quality of the RAW matches to the SmackDown number one contender’s matches. Both of the Fatal Four Ways were loaded with good to really good workers. Whereas, battle royals are never known to be good, and three of the final six workers that participated in the Six Pack Challenge aren’t known as world class workers. Even so, the end of the battle royal was really well done. The Six Pack Challenge was the best match of the night. Like RAW, the SmackDown brand also gave us a surprise number one contender. This time in the form of Dolph Ziggler.

Many people on wrestling message boards have been complaining about Dolph Ziggler winning the spot to face Dean Ambrose. However, unless you were to have AJ Styles or John Cena as the number one contender, Ziggler was probably the next best choice. Bray Wyatt vs. Dean Ambrose has been done to death over the last year to the point that it would seem like the “same old/same old.” Baron Corbin and Apollo Crews, unlike Finn Balor, are not ready to be put into one of the top title matches on the WWE’s second biggest show of the year. The biggest problem with the Six Pack match is that AJ Styles took the pinfall to lose the match. AJ Styles is supposed to fight John Cena at SummerSlam. Therefore, the WWE should have kept AJ strong leading into SummerSlam. He shouldn’t have been beaten in the match, especially after being pinned in the Battleground six-man tag team match on Sunday.

TALK THE TALK


SmackDown was promoted as being the “wrestling” show. However, it seemed like there was more talking on this two hour broadcast than during RAW’s three-hour marathon. Following a really good match between Natalya and Becky Lynch, every woman wrestler individually made their way to the ring cutting a quick promo along the way. It ended once Eva Marie was introduced. Before she could say a word, USA cut to a commercial, and the women were nowhere to be found after returning from the three-minute break. On a positive note, despite Eva Marie getting the Roman Reigns treatment from the fans, her entrance was awesome. The voiceover introduction as her music played gives her an aura and arrogance that no other WWE female performer has. That was very well done, and should help keep her as the most hated woman on the brand.

Following the women talking, we got more talking in the form of Miz-TV. The Miz’s guest was Randy Orton. Actually, this wasn’t too bad of a segment as Orton seems to be motivated and happy since his return. Was this as good as the Highlight Reel was on Sunday? No, as there were no memorable lines delivered like Randy did at Battleground. However, it set up a quick match between the two former rivals, so it served its purpose.

Following their match, we were given more talking. This time, Heath Slater hit the ring, and was trying to convince Shane McMahon to sign him to SmackDown. Shane’s response was for Slater to submit a resume. This part of the segment made no sense. SmackDown is supposed to be the brand that offers opportunity. Heath Slater was looking for an opportunity. However, Shane crushed his dream.

RETURNS and DEBUTS

One difference between the debut RAW and SmackDown telecasts was that SmackDown gave us a glimpse of former stars coming back into the fold. During the Heath Slater segment, a returning Rhyno snuck up behind Heath Slater and delivered a devasting spear to end the segment. Earlier in the show, the WWE aired a vignette showing that Shelton Benjamin is coming back to SmackDown in the near future.

Where RAW instantly turned Finn Balor a main event star straight off of his NXT run, SmackDown didn’t debut their top NXT talent yet. American Alpha is set to debut next week. A huge victory or an outstanding match by American Alpha on the debut “new era” show could instantly have made them one of the top acts on SmackDown. Unfortunately, we will need to wait another week.

THE BAD OF SMACKDOWN

While all of the talking segments made the show feel different than this week’s “new era” RAW, it felt like the “old era” WWE. SmackDown didn’t distinguish itself enough to show us what their identity will be in this new era. How will this SmackDown be different than the old SmackDown? Hopefully, we will get more of a sense of this in the next few weeks.

One of the differences between the new and old SmackDown brand is that JBL and David Otunga are now on the announcing team. This was probably the most glaring weakness of the new era SmackDown brand. As great as Mauro Ranallo is as an announcer, the announcing was worse this week than last week. John Bradshaw Layfield shouted too much, and seemed to talk over Ranallo at times. David Otunga is fairly new, so he should get a pass as he develops into a full-time announcer. However, if JBL and Mauro aren’t able to get their chemistry with each other in sync, SmackDown will feature the worst announcing crew in the WWE. Who would have ever though that sentence would be typed for an announcing team that Mauro Ranallo captained.

While they did a really good job of setting up a new number one contender to Dean Ambrose’s WWE Championship, they never mentioned anything about how they will handle the tag team or women’s title situation. Will they create their own championships, like RAW created the Universal title to be their top championship? Did they sign a deal with RAW to have the Women’s and Tag Team champions become travelling champions between the brands like in the territory days? Are these women and tag teams just going to wrestle just to wrestle with no end reward in sight? Too many questions were left unanswered in the debut episode.

DIFFERENCES

Like RAW, SmackDown received a new opening theme, a new entrance (with no ramp), and the ring features blue ring ropes. However, the changes were very minimal. The first image on SmackDown had the camera follow Shane McMahon and Daniel Bryan from the backstage area and into the arena. This was pretty cool as you were able to have a first person view of what a wrestler sees when he makes his way to the ring. The camera angles were interesting. It definitely gave the viewer a different feel for the show, and the shaky convulsive camera shots were gone. That’s a huge improvement.

One difference that the WWE should have continued was the picture in picture during the commercial breaks. During the opening match of the draft episode, when the WWE went to a commercial break, they used a split screen where you viewed and heard the commercial but the viewer was still able to see the match. This week, the split screen was gone. When the main event started, the WWE immediately cut to a commercial. Using the split screen would have been a perfect fit in that moment as a commercial in that spot felt rushed. Using the split screen during commercials would definitely give SmackDown a different, and better, vibe to it as no other TV show or sports broadcast does this. SmackDown would be proven to be innovators once others started to follow suit.

OVERALL


It’s only been one week, so it’s not fair to judge who won the brand split war. SmackDown had an average show, which was made to seem worse following a pay per view on Sunday that gave us an awesome match between Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn and a really good Shield Triple Threat match. That WWE Network show proceeded one of the best RAW’s of all-time. SmackDown would have had to give us a match of the year candidate, the debut of Shinsuke Nakamura or Samoa Joe where they were instantly inserted into the main event level like RAW did with Finn Balor, and possibly the return of CM Punk in order to have been on the level of this week’s RAW. That’s how great RAW was this week. RAW was great. SmackDown was good. Neither were a complete failure. Time will tell which show rises to the top. At least the WWE is interesting once again.

article topics :

RAW, Smackdown, WWE, WWE Draft, RSarnecky