WWE is 1 company with 2 very different brands

With WrestleMania 33 fast approaching and the two brands of WWE about to collide on the so-called Grandest Stage Of Them All, it’s interesting to take a step back and look at the two shows that drive the company. Over the last year, RAW and SmackDown Live have become very different entities within the larger WWE structure, and it makes for a fascinating dynamic in the largest wrestling promotion in the world.

In July of 2016, WWE looked at a roster that was steadily expanding in numbers and steadily increasing in quality, and decided to split their two brands again. Many were worried about how stars would be handled on the two different shows and what directions they would go it — as it turned out, that would be two very different directions.

WWE’s flagship show, RAW, got filled with some of the top stars in the company. Kevin Owens, Roman Reigns, Chris Jericho, Brock Lesnar, Seth Rollins, and eventually the current Universal Champion, Bill Goldberg. The women’s division is strong, with Charlotte Flair and Sasha banks anchoring the division from day one, with Nia Jax getting drafted from NXT and current WWE RAW Women’s Champion Bayley joining the show not long after the draft. Talents like Samoa Joe have shown up since then, and injured star Finn Balor will soon be returning to action eager to reclaim the Universal Championship that was first held by him.

RAW retained the glitz and glamour feel it’s held for a long time as the show’s top brand, but with longtime WWE anchor figures in John Cena and Randy Orton both heading to SmackDown in the draft, it created an opportunity for fresher faces to step up in their place and become leading stars in the company. Some guys have definitely done that, with Kevin Owens especially seeing his star rise significantly, earning a long run with the Universal Title that only just ended a few weeks ago at the Fastlane pay-per-view.

Despite all that success and all that talent, many fans still seem to prefer SmackDown Live, and once you look at what the “blue brand” does different from RAW it can be easy to see why. RAW still focuses on a heavily produced style, relying heavily on almost over-managed segments outside the ring and a heavy “authority” hand that makes many fans switch off for long stretches of the show.

SmackDown, however, feels a bit more ... well, raw. They go a long ways towards letting the action in the ring tell the majority of the stories, and when the microphones do come out, there’s a lot less pomp and circumstance involved in it most of the time. The words being exchanged between wrestlers and the occasional authority figure often feel as though they come more from the hip rather than memorized from a script, and they tend to feel much more purposeful than over-forced encounters and confrontations often found on RAW. It’s a cohesive, logical universe that comes off feeling like a wrestling show rather than RAW’s variety show approach.

It’s a format not everyone in the wrestling industry can handle — simply put, some guys just need the script — but for those who do, it’s helped propel SmackDown to a higher level of quality and popularity than it’s had in a long, long time. Especially anchored by verbal masters like John Cena and WWE World Champion Bray Wyatt, SmackDown has turned the time between matches from a snack break to something to watch. Even better, though, that format and freedom has allowed wrestlers like AJ Styles, Alexa Bliss, and most especially The Miz to emerge from lower ranks in the company to show just how excellent they can be.

The Miz is a former WWE Champion, but has spent most of the last few years in relative obscurity deep down the card. In the last couple of years, though, he’s done some fantastic work as an incredibly arrogant villain, but it was a moment on the Talking Smack post-show for SmackDown that airs on the WWE Network that really established and cemented just how incredible The Miz can be.

That was an incredibly powerful moment for the then-Intercontinental Champion, showing that he can display fire and passion in addition to his trademark arrogance. That helped catapult him up the ranking of WWE superstars in the minds of many fans, and seems to have won him a significantly larger role in SmackDown’s future plans as a result, with Miz and his real-life wife Maryse currently embroiled in a heated feud with John Cena and Nikki Bella with a WrestleMania match the result — and a title chase seeming likely in the near future. It also highlighted the strength of the Talking Smack show, allowing wrestlers a unique but still very useful environment to say what needs to be said, both in and out of character.

That’s been one of the starkest differences between RAW and SmackDown of late — RAW lacks much of that passion across much of its roster, and instead of title shots being earned the hard way as they have been on SmackDown, on RAW title matches often seem to be put together because someone thought it sounded good.

Unfortunately, having good reasons to put together a match of such importance generally outweighs a good-sounding matchup, and fans get real tired of title shots being handed out because someone made someone else angry like we often see on RAW. I mean, why on earth are Enzo and Cass in the tag title match at WrestleMania, anyways? It’s not like they’ve done anything actually all that interesting in the last year, much less something actually worthwhile of a title match. And the less said about Bill Goldberg winning the Universal Title, the better.

Plus, where else are you going to see Randy Orton burn down Bray Wyatt’s swamp shack? Certainly not on RAW, as the red brand just hasn’t been taking any kind of chances with dipping into the weirder side of wrestling, which SmackDown has been completely unafraid of doing.

Not everything works completely well on SmackDown, though — Dolph Ziggler has mostly been wasted, Dean Ambrose has spent much of the last year treading water, the tag team division is a mess — though it’s little better on RAW — and talents like Curt Hawkins and Apollo Crews seem largely pointless in the current structure of the roster. It will be interesting to see how the draft this summer changes the two rosters, with someone like Ziggler seeming likely to do better on RAW, and AJ Styles looking ready to try to anchor the “big” show in the company. RAW, meanwhile, has wrestlers like Sami Zayn and Rusev who could likely thrive with a little more breathing room to work with on SmackDown.

In the end, and moving past any individual strengths or weaknesses of the shows, it looks very much like RAW and SmackDown are intended for two very different audiences. RAW features storylines and matches and production that largely fits the soap-opera-with-fists nature of wrestling that many mainstream fans or more casual fans expect from WWE, where SmackDown is catered a bit more to the “hardcore” fans who like more quality in-ring work and a bit more edge to the stories being told than they typically find on RAW.

Watching that differing dynamic play out during the course of WrestleMania 33 will be fascinating, and seeing how it changes and evolves in the coming year through a new draft and inevitable authority and story changes on both RAW and SmackDown will bear close watching. Not everyone will be a fan of both shows, but there’s certainly something for every wrestling fan right now, and WWE is doing an excellent job at making sure they have the right kind of variety going on between their two main shows.