There have been a lot of arguing/discussing online about the WWE’s booking habits and how they’re more reactive than proactive just like during the 1990s and the Monday Night Wars.
Like then, the WWE became complacent about their standing as the to company and quickly found themselves playing catch up in many ways when their creative output wasn’t what it should’ve been.
While WWE Creative has been at it’s worst for the last few years, on last week’s Smackdown and this week’s Raw they put on a couple of good shows.
But there was a reason for it.
Celebration and competition
With AEW growing in large thanks to former WWE stars, both pushed away and leaving on good terms, the WWE was at a crossroads.
Vince McMahon and everyone else has said AEW isn’t their competition, and in a way they’re right as for the last two years AEW hasn’t inspired them to present better storylines.
In fact, the WWE doubled down on what they were shoveling our way without care what the fans wanted or said.
But there was no way McMahon was going to allow Smackdown to be a bad show on the eve of 9/11’s 20th anniversary and it ended up the best Smackdown we’ve seen in a long, long time.
Competition
Raw happened to be across from the NFL’s first Monday Night Football game of the season, and there was a choice of putting out McMahon’s usual approved entertainment, or give it a pay-per-view feel.
So, they moved the WWE Championship match between Randy Orton and Bobby Lashley from Extreme Rules to last night, and it was a really good match but it felt like they had another gear they could’ve shifted into had it been a PPV match.
The reason may be because since Smackdown we knew Big E was going to come to Raw, and seven hours before Raw Big E tweeted that he was going to cash in his MITB contract.
This took away any suspense in his winning, leaving it all for who would he cash it in on.
It’s awesome he won, but the build up made it obvious. The show overall was pretty good and with any luck they won’t go back to what we’ve been forced to endure.
After Smackdown, it was reported that they were excited backstage and feel they can put that kind of show on regularly.
Of course, this leads to the questions as to why they weren’t over the last four or five years while they were driving fans away?
Looks like they do need AEW and other threats to care about what the fans think and want, and we hope it’ll continue. What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below.
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